The incidental photographer: Roy Sieber and his African images.

Among the essays honoring the life and achievements of Roy Sieber, this may be one of the few not written by one of his former students, Sieber's generosity extended to people like me--an orphan in the American academic system because I had studied at a German university and did not have an American mentor when I arrived in this country He was curious about my Cameroon research, which included extended fieldwork and the analysis of German archival sources, Always open to new and different methodological approaches, Sieber was also intrigued by my work on historical photographs from Africa, for at the time, few scholars considered the systematic study of photography in Africa a worthwhile pursuit. His interest was no doubt a reflection of his own appreciation of the medium. When I joined the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art as Curator of the Eliot Elifoson Photographic Archives (EEPA), a position Sieber helped create, he became my supportive supervisor. He had recognized the importance of photography that shewed African artworks in context, and thus promoted the development of the EEPA as a primary resource and collection center for photography from Africa.

In 1993 Sieber donated his Nigerian images to the EEPA--more than 1,000 black-and-white negatives taken during his first trip in 1958, and original color slides from subsequent visits. His Ghanaian pictures from the 1960s followed a bit later, The total number of his slides now in the Smithsonian archives exceeds 1,800. (1)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Had I been one of Roy Sieber's students, I would have witnessed how he used many of his slides in the classroom. When I talked to some of his former students and mentioned that I would be writing about his field photographs, I inevitably heard comments about these images. We sat through all of his slides in his lectures many times over, they said. And there are some, they continued, that are incredibly important, such as the series of Kwahu funerary terracottas (Fig. 3) or the 1971 sequence showing the Timi of Ede in Nigeria (Fig. 4). Sieber deposited his slides in Indiana University's teaching collection, a visual library much like those common in art history departments all over the United States. He also published his images in his essays and catalogues, but a quick analysis reveals that he only utilized a small selection of the entire corpus. A handful of his photographs were frequently reprinted, even picked up by art historian colleagues for their own publications.

Sieber's photography in Africa warrants a closer look from several vantage points. Here I will briefly describe the emphases of his pictures and place them in the historical context of photographic practice by Africanist art scholars, which drew on both ethnographic and museum conventions. I will then investigate the relationship of Sieber's photographic practice to art historical paradigms, for the nature of his images parallels his research interests. Finally, I will briefly consider how particular field photographs took on relevance through frequent use and reprinting and became the image that rendered the context of art forms depicted in them. This is by no means a comprehensive analysis. Rather, I hope that readers will agree that it might be worthwhile to research some of these topics in greater detail.

Like many art historians and anthropologists, Roy Sieber took cameras along when he did his research in Africa (Fig. 2). He used several, among them a Konica and later a Nikkormat with a couple of lenses. His son, Matthew, who is a professional photographer,2 told me that Sieber was not particularly trained in photography, nor did he display more than a casual interest in it. Occasionally he would take family pictures at home--to practice before departing on a trip. According to Matthew, his father considered photography to be part of the job, "part of the whole" the "whole" being the methodology of research in Africa. Sieber's wife, Sophie, agreed: "His basic interest was in documenting."3 Sieber recognized that besides the writing pad, the camera was an indispensable tool for this purpose.

Photography as a method of supporting fieldwork and as documentation of scholarly findings has had a long tradition (see Theye 1989; Edwards 1992). The annals of art studies and the related, much older study of material culture within anthropology (ethnology in the German-speaking realm) are tilled with reports of successes and failures of scholars who engaged in this activity. Sieber, who in file 1950s had read many of the early travel reports, missionary literature, and ethnographic descriptions, had of course seen illustrations in these books (Ross 1992:39). Some of the works he consulted contained an array of contextual images. Among them were the books by Leo Frobenius, the German ethnographer, for whom material culture elements served as indications of the diffusion of culture.

For a scholar like Sieber, who felt that the collection of empirical data on objects and their contexts was by far the most urgent pursuit in African art studies, photographs seemed to be an ideal means of documentation. Sieber's interest in visualizing context and his knowledge of images in the earlier literature became evident in his catalogues. The 1972 African Textiles and Decorative Arts, written for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art--then quite a coup-included 31 contextual images. The 1980 catalogue African Furniture and Household Objects was even more opulent. At a time when using historical and contemporary imagery was not as common as it is now, he integrated 139 engravings, woodcuts, and photographs into the text, among them 14 of his own pictures, and by doing so contextualized the objects he had selected for display (Fig. 5).

In 1958, when Sieber went to Africa (Nigeria) for the first time, right after receiving his Ph.D., photography's role in the realm of material culture, and by extension the emerging discipline of African art studies, was firmly established, and the conventions of the practice were well known and publicized. One emphasis was on the depiction of production techniques. Notes and Queries in Anthropology, in the 1950s and '60s still the bible for professionals and laymen on how to conduct successful research in the field, contains an appendix about photography that summarizes some of these conventions. The sixth edition, first published in 1951 and reprinted several times, states:

   In photographing technical processes
   care should be taken that the
   worker [i.e., the photographic subject]
   is looking at what he is doing,
   and not at the camera. The photographer
   should take the same stage
   of operation from several different
   positions, if possible. Close-ups of
   the hands showing the method of
   manipulating the object being made
   or of handling the tool add greatly
   to the value of such studies. Stills
   exposed at frequent intervals will,
   if taken carefully and numbered in
   sequence, show the details of technological
   processes, such as weaving,
   pottery-making, etc. as well as,
   and sometimes better than, cinematograph
   pictures.

   (Notes and Queries 1951:358)

Even if Sieber never read this passage, there was ample precedent for this type of photography in the literature (particularly in German studies of material culture) and in the work of his colleagues. Thus, it is not surprising that he followed these conventions. In 1971 he went to the Yoruba kingdom of Ede in Nigeria to carry out a survey of artistic modes and forms (what anthropologists would have called techniques and artifacts). Several series of images from this visit depict techniques, ranging from weaving and basketry to pottery making and calabash carving (Figs. 6--9). Of all his publications, Sieber's 1973 essay "Ede: Crafts and Surveys" best exemplifies this tradition of material culture photography, which creates visual inventories. During his earlier visits to Ghana, he also observed and visually documented production processes (Figs. 10-12).

In a similar vein, Sieber followed common conventions of photographic documentation when he recorded masquerades, dances, and other performances and ceremonies. There are many series of such images, although capturing performances before the advent of advanced camera technology often proved challenging. Light conditions occasionally were less than ideal which particularly affected the quality of the color slides. Participants moved in unexpected ways, and getting the right camera angle and framing was difficult. Sieber's struggles with the medium become evident here. He was, after all an incidental photographer who, like many of his colleagues, took up photography for the particular purpose of studying and documenting African art. Few of the color images of masquerades, performances, and rituals are successful in the sense that their lighting, composition, and framing can be deemed accomplished. According to his wife, Sieber certainly took pride in those that turned out well (Figs. 13, 14). Perhaps the best known are color slides of the Aowin Do association in Dadiaso Town in southern Ghana, which he took in 1967. In one of them the colorful masquerader tills the frame and is administered to by his attendants. It made the cover of African Arts (April 1991), the only Sieber picture ever selected for this purpose (Fig. 15).

Black-and-white film was more forgiving, as the photographs from the 1958 trip to Africa demonstrate. In fact, a series of shots of the first masked dance Sieber ever witnessed, a performance in the Igala village of Okpo, succeeded reasonably well (Fig. 16).4 Describing the circumstances under which he took the pictures of the mask Egu Orumamu, he remarked in an interview with Doran Ross:

   This was the first masked dance I
   saw in Africa.... In this photograph,
   you see that children, young men,
   and women were present at the performance.... Just
   after I took this picture,
   the mask moved up to me, and
   suddenly this whole face filled
   what I saw through the camera lens.
   I lowered the camera and he was
   standing there saluting. Obviously
   an army veteran was wearing the
   mask. The only thing I could think
   of was to salute back. Everybody
   applauded and cheered because he
   had the wit to know what to do,
   and I had the wit to know how to
   respond. It was a great moment.

   (in Ross 1992:43)

The pictures of masquerades taken during the same trip rank among Sieber's finest and most interesting from an art historical perspective (Figs. 17, 18).

Other themes are not as common in his photographs. There are some architectural views, especially from the later trips. Sieber documented those taken in 1958 in Nigeria relatively well, but most of the later images seem random, and the systematic description of architectural forms is mostly missing. In contrast to his meticulous notes about photographs of techniques and performances, these captions are often vague, and the images remain enigmatic (Figs. 19, 20, Cover). Sieber himself acknowledged the different motivation behind one of his best-known architectural photographs, that of a woman sitting in her dry-season kitchen in a village in northern Ghana (Fig. 5). "This 1964 photo resulted from my casual tour through a compound with no particular goal--only curiosity. Later it proved useful as an illustration ..." (in Ross 1992:51).

Portraits of people Sieber encountered are less numerous than one would expect. Frequently these images serve purposes other than portrayal, for they document artists displaying their works, owners showing objects in their possession (Fig. 21), and types of adornment and dress, including leaders in their regalia (Figs. 1, 22, 23). In his emphasis on the photograph as scholarly evidence, Sieber neglected landscapes. Moreover, there are few urban scenes, for his interest focused on the "traditional" sphere. Nevertheless, several unusual images show popular art forms, some of which, as paradigms and interests in art historical inquiry shifted, ultimately received quite a bit of attention. Among them is the photograph of ingeniously designed barber chairs in a market at Oshogbo (Fig. 24), which Sieber included in several publications (Sieber 1980:164; 1995:37).

A large corpus of images depict single--singled-out--objects. This form of photography emphasizes the specimen, which can be analyzed ex post facto and permits the creation of taxonomies. That same concept also inspired human "type" photography, an anthropological practice based on the notion that rigorous, predetermined views of representatives of different races would allow detailed classification. Much like the "type," the object is photographed in different views, isolated from its context, for future formal study. Note file description in Notes and Queries (1951:358):

   For portraits and some other subjects
   [i.e. objects], a plain background
   is almost essential; as this is
   sometimes difficult to obtain, a roll
   of neutral colored cloth, which
   could be stretched between two
   poles, should be provided. It must
   be kept at a sufficient distance from
   the subject to be out of focus, but
   near enough to cover file whole field
   shown. A plain wall, especially of
   mud, makes a good background ...

These photographs had to be accompanied by exact measurements and commentary, if they were to be useful.

Another impetus for this practice was museum object photography, which has a long history (Carlson 1996). Conventions governing this form of photography required, as they did for ethnographic photography, that the background be plain and unobtrusive. Sieber, like many of his colleagues (and later his students) who photographed objects in Africa, created these proper settings with pieces of fabric or by selecting a neutral background, such as a wall, as advised in Note and Queries (Figs. 25a, b). One of Sieber's closest friends, William B. Fagg (1914-1992), took thousands of such photographs during his travels in Nigeria; they are now archived at the Royal Anthropological Institute in London.5 Many other art historians followed in these pioneers' footsteps.6

What drove this activity? Several motivations emerge upon closer examination. The strong sense that the quality of "traditional" African art being produced by carvers and other artists was on the decline and that this art was endangered fostered the desire to document objects in the field before they fell out of use and were destroyed over time. Sieber articulated this concern in his survey of art and artistic production in Ede:

   In the face of the rapid disappearance
   of artistic modes and forms
   over the past half century, it now appears
   that many of the art forms of
   traditional Africa are vanishing
   faster they are being recorded. The
   situation is analogous to the loss of
   archaeological data when a dam is
   built. It is time that we must seriously
   consider tactics analogous to salvage
   archaeology Techniques should
   be established to record the arts and
   serve as an inventory and as a resource
   pool.... The compiling of the
   results of census / inventories--including
   data and photographs--could
   mesh with seminars, research
   projects as well as provide a permanent
   log of vanishing industries.

   (Sieber 1973:45)

Photography was indeed one of the best techniques for creating visual inventories for posterity. 'to this day, the salvage paradigm underlies much of the photography of "vanishing" African peoples and things.7 Sieber's sense of urgency about documenting art forms also arose out of another concern. One of his agendas throughout his career was to establish a history of African art to counter the misperception of prominent art historians like Ernest Gombrich, and the general public as well, that African art is somewhat timeless and primordial (Adams 1989:59).

Perhaps equally important was the role that such photography played in aiding the delineation of so-called tribal styles, a preoccupation of many scholars during a time when African art was still considered "primitive" by many of their art historian colleagues,s When Sieber entered the field after the Second World War, the analysis of style as a means of classifying works of art was the one of the mainstream paradigms in the discipline of art history. He studied with such luminaries as Meyer Shapiro in New York, whose seminal writings on style had major impact (Shapiro 1953), and encountered and collaborated with other proponents, among them Paul Wingert, Robert Goldwater, and William Fagg (Ross 1992:39). Fagg, in particular, spent his career defining "tribal" styles; it is not surprising that he, too, relied on photography in the field to document styles among Nigerian peoples. Sieber's chapter "Traditional Arts of Black Africa," included in a classic 1977 text on Africa for students, articulated this paradigm in some detail. Beginning with "geographic area styles," such as the Western Sudan and the Yoruba realm, he then continues:

   Within these larger geographic
   areas, "tribal" styles have also developed.
   The term tribe in African
   art studies refers to an ethnic and
   cultural base for a discrete style. In
   a sense, these tribal styles are most
   easily identifiable, and indeed,
   most survey books of African sculpture
   emphasize the styles of "tribal"
   groups. In addition to the larger
   style areas and the tribal styles, still
   smaller units may be found. In fact,
   if one examines African sculptural
   forms closely, it is possible to determine
   "subtribal" styles, village
   styles, and even the styles of individual
   carvers.

   (Sieber 1977:223)

This ability to delineate styles and artists' hands was seen as a means of putting African art on the same level as other art traditions.

Photographs of objects in the field and African museum collections thus helped to refine the stylistic map of Africa, down to the village level. Sieber's 1958 photographs of works in the Jos Museum and in villages of the Igala, Idoma, and small groups ha the Benue River region in northern Nigeria allowed him first and foremost to identify styles.9 Much like images of objects in museum collections around the world, which were widely distributed for teaching purposes, these pictures--surrogates for the actual piece--supported the appreciation of the stylistic and iconographic qualities of the works. To make such photographs useful for analysis required particular information, which Sieber meticulously noted down on filing cards for each piece. To give just one example, the card for a Montol figure (Figs. 25a, b) reads as follows 10:

  MONTOL
  Photographed August 31, 1958 at
      LALIN village.
  Owner: GUNUZE
  Carver: ? bought in BALTIP
       market (Montol)
  Age: 8 years
  H. 15"

Sieber brought this figure to the United States. Initially acquired by Raymond and Laura Wielgus, who were close friends of Sieber's, it later went to the collection of the Indiana University Art Museum (Fig.26). More than any other work of art, it remains forever associated with Sieber, his collecting and documenting.

In "Sculpture of Northern Nigeria," a 1961 exhibition held at the Museum of Primitive Art in New York, Sieber brought to a wider audience his findings and stylistic classification of a region that had received little attention until then. He used many of his 1958 black-and-white photographs in the catalogue that accompanied the exhibition, including those of objects in the collections of the Jos Museum (Sieber 1961). Publishing this kind of object photography had, however, an unanticipated effect. Dealers in African art, a profession that came into its own as the field of African art studies developed, used these publications as mad maps to important objects. This practice influenced many scholars to refrain from revealing the exact location where their object photographs were taken, and even to withhold the images entirely (Ross 1992:4748).

The 1961 exhibition contained many works Sieber had collected in Nigeria and taken out of the country with the permission of the British authorities. His in situ object photographs thus also showed quite a few pieces that had made their way into collections in the United States. It is intriguing that these images acquired an additional meaning--as evidence that the works had actually been in their original location at a given point in time. However, it is the nature of this type of photography that--even in the field--the singled-out objects were already decontextualized, as was the famous Montol figure mentioned above. While the photograph does not provide any contextual information, it establishes the provenance and condition of the object. The work was part of the corpus that Sieber collected while in Nigeria, and, judging by the image, it has not been repaired or altered since it came to the United States.

Among Sieber's most intriguing images are those of objects displayed by artists or owners, such as an Idoma mask named Adagba (elephant, i.e., big one) of Chief Obekpe Onoja, who was a district head, taken in Otum Village, Otjkpa District, on May 18, 1958 (Fig. 27). Another photograph shows an ldoma Orinya crest with its owner, Ahola, taken in Otobi Village on September 11, 1958 (Fig. 21). A final example of this type of object image, taken on May 17, 1958, shows the Igala carver Etude of Etetekpe Village, who, in 1949, had created family protective figures after his father's figures had been destroyed by termites. His father's spirit had appeared to him and requested that he carve a replacement (Fig. 28; published in Sieber 1961: fig. 13). These photographs, with their extended captions and research information, demonstrate Sieber's interest in individual artists at a time when the prevailing paradigm proclaimed that African art emerged from collective inspiration and showed little change. It might be worthwhile to look at Sieber's photographs beyond the published images and reassess them as documents-asking new questions, making them speak in different ways. Clearly the photographer succeeded in his intent to create evidentiary materials for research.

Yet, there is yet another dimension to these images. Readers familiar with Sieber's writings may well recognize most of the photographs presented in this essay for he used them at one time or another. Many rank among contextual pictures that frequently show up in catalogues and exhibitions, forever associated with Sieber's name and research (e.g., see Figs. 5, 9-12, 21). What gives these few images such relevance and impact? Is it their aesthetic quality? Is it their thematic content? Is it uniqueness as the only contextual image available? Is it familiarity through constant repetition? Is it the reputation of the photographer that enhances their credibility? The answer may well be "All of the above."

Some of the pictures are truly successful from an aesthetic point of view. Sophie Sieber attributes her husband's concern with composition and framing to his early training as a printmaker and artist at the New School in New York (Ross 1992:36), A good example of a well-composed image is that of the woman in her outdoor kitchen in northern Ghana (Fig. 5), which graced his catalogue on African furniture and the interview in African Arts (Sieber 1980; Ross 1992:51).

Besides the quality of an image, its theme may make it desirable as well. Occasionally a photograph may be the only one or the best available to depict a particular activity or objects in context. Sieber's pictures of Kwahu terracottas belong in this category and have a rather fascinating background. One of them was prominently published in his essay on the terracottas (1972b:174) in the book African Art and Leadership. It is part of the group of in situ object photographs, and at first glance it seems contrived--arranged by the photographer. But it turns out that his Ghanaian collaborators created the display (Fig. 3). In reference to this particular series of images, Sieber stated:

   This is exactly how they presented
   these terracottas for my viewing. It
   was all done in a dramatic way. First,
   they came out with the Nsaa cloth, a
   northern cloth, which means that
   everything is protected from touching
   the earth. Then they brought out
   the two chairs and finally the terracottas
   and the pots.... Bill Fagg
   refused to use this photograph once
   because he said they never do this.

   (in Ross 1992:38)

Knowing the production context adds to the understanding and appreciation of this photograph. The image with commentary sheds light both on the ways African collaborators sought to represent themselves through objects and on the context of Sieber's fieldwork.

Aesthetic impact, theme, uniqueness, and the imprimatur of a well-known photographer thus render some images iconic. Much like certain works of art that in the eyes of Western scholars and viewers represent a particular style at its best, these photographs forever visually inscribe contexts in which such objects were found or produced. Constant use and circulation add to their impact. One need only think of Eliot Elisofon's famous pictures of Kuba kings in their full regalia, or Hans Gehne's in situ photograph of two Fang bieri, which are among the most frequently requested images in the EEPA.n Several of Sieber's pictures have become part of this iconic group. Not bad for an incidental photographer who took up photography mostly as a necessity rather than an avocation! Notes, page 96

[This article was accepted for publication in April 2003.]

1. Of course, after years of teaching, lecturing, and providing original images to publishers, a few were lost here and there. Copies of most color slides and some originals remain in the Teaching Slide Collection in the Art Department of Indiana University. Most of the black-and-white images are catalogued on filing cards prepared by Sieber and his assistants. EEPA has copies of these cards, while the originals stayed at indiana University. In the near future most of Sieber's slides will be Web accessible under the URL www.siris.si.edu.

2. During the visit to Ede, Matthew, who was twelve at the time, often went to the field with his father to help him with the photography and recording equipment. Interviewed by Christine Kreamer in May 2002, Matt recalled meeting the photographer Frank Speed (the Sieber children called him "Uncle God," playing off the expression "Godspeed") and "being just Fascinated ... watching him [develop photograps] ... and he would explain to me what he was doing ... It was right utter we got back [from Nigeria] that I started taking pictures."

3. I thank Sophia Sieber and Matthew 5ieber for their insightful comments and suggestions, offered during our conversation in May 2003.

4. Matthew Sieber indicated, that he had to "work" quite a bit on his father's images, when he printed some of them. Indeed, black-and-white film allows correcting of over- or underexposure.

5. Copy sets can be found at several American institutions, among them the National Museum of African Art, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives.

6. Among them are such well-known photographers as Henry and Margaret Thompson Drewal, who created extensive visual documentations during their research in Nigeria among the Yoruba. These are now in the EEPA.

7. Many well-known photographers saw and see their work as a way to save forever visual aspects of disappearing African cultures. Among them are Casimir d'Ostoja Zagourski (1881 1944), Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher and Peter Magubane (Geary 2002; Beckwith & Fisher 1999; Magubane 1998).

8. See Adams (1989) for an account of the development of the discipline, and Kasfir (1984) for a critique of the "one tribe, one style" paradigm.

9. Sieber and his family were based in los, then a British administrative headquarters For the circumstances of his first stay in Africa and the choice of region for his research, see Ross 1992:47.

10. Sieber's notes on his black-and-white photographs, EEPA.

11. For a more detailed discussion of the Gehne image and the use of contextual photographs in publications and exhibitions, see Geary 1995.

References cited

Adams, Monni. 1989 "African Visual Arts from an Art Historical Perspective," The African Studies Review 32, 2: 55-103.

Beckwith, Carol and Angela Fisher. 1999. African Ceremonies 2 vols, New York: Abrams.

Carlson, Amanda. 1996. "Object Photography: African Art in the Photographic Frame." Master of Arts thesis, Henry Hope School of Fine Arts, Indiana University, Bloomington.

Edwards, Elizabeth 1992. Anthropology and Photography 1860-1920 New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Geary, Christraud M. 1995. "Photographic Practice in Africa and Its Implications for the Use of Historical Photographs as Contextual Evidence," in Fotografia e storia dell' Africa, ed. Alessandro Triulzi, pp. 10%30. Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale.

Geary, Christraud M. 2002. In and Out of Focus; Images from Central Africa, 1885-1960. London: Philip Wilson.

Kasfir, Sidney. 1984. "One Tribe, One Style? Paradigms in the Historiography of African Art," History in Africa 11: 163-93.

Magubane, Peter 1998. Vanishing Cultures of South Africa New York: Rizzoli.

Notes and Queries in Anthropology. 1951 (6th ed.). Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul

Ross, Doran H. 1992. "Interview with Roy Sieber," African Arts 25, 4: 36-51.

Shapiro. Meyer. 1953. "Style," in Anthropology Today, ed. Arthur L. Kroeber Chicago: Chicago University Press: 287-312.

Sieber, Roy. 1961. Sculpture of Northern Nigeria. New York: Museum of Primitive Art.

Sieber, Roy, 1972a. African Textiles and Decorative Arts New York: The Museum of Modern Art.

Sieber, Roy 1972b. "Kwahu Terracottas, Oral Traditions, and Ghanaian History," in African Art and Leadership, eds. Douglas Fraser and Herbert M. Cole, pp. 173-83. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Sieber, Roy. 1973. "Ede: Crafts and Surveys," African Arts 6, 4: 44-49, 94.

Sieber, Roy. 1977 "Traditional Arts of Black Africa," in Africa, eds. Phyllis Martin and Patrick O'Meara, pp. 221-42. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Sieber, Roy. 1980. African Furniture and Household Objects. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Sieber, Roy. 1995. "African Furniture between Tradition and Colonization," in African Seats, ed. Sandro Bocola, pp. 30-37. Munich: Prestel.

Theye, Thomas (ed.). 1989. Der geraubte Schatten. Eine Weltreise im Spiegel der ethnographischen Pbotographie. Munich: Bucher.

Christraud Geary is curator of African and Oceanic art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. For thirteen years, until February 2003, she was the curator of the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. She is a consulting editor and photo essay editor of African Arts.