PORTRAIT AND PLACE, photography in Senegal, 1840-1960

240pp., b/w & colour illus., hardback, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2024

ISBN: 9780691246017

A social history of photography in Senegal, from the 1840s, when the oldest-surviving daguerreotype from West Africa was made, to the 1960s, when photography became the most popular medium as Senegal achieved independence.

“Portrait and Place is a major accomplishment, offering a significant and original contribution to the field by putting art history into a new and challenging dialogue with philosophy and history. Giulia Paoletti brings new conceptualizations based on African material into global discourse on art and photography, thus reversing the assumed normal direction of theory from Europe outward to its (post) colonies.” Patricia Hayes, co-editor of Ambivalent: Photography and visibility in African history

“Portrait and Place is a wonderfully conceived, beautifully written, and theoretically ambitious journey through the worlds of Senegalese photography. In its pages, Giulia Paoletti insists on the local significance of photography while expanding our depth of field in ways that challenge our assumptions about Africa, African art, modernism, and histories of photography.” Steven Nelson, co-editor of Black Modernisms in the Transatlantic World

Giulia Paoletti is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia. She is co-editor of The Expanded Subject: New perspectives in photographic portraiture from Africa.