The Fight against Apartheid!
<p><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Fight against Apartheid! </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">is, as its cover explains, “an </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">album of exhibition photographs showing life under apartheid and depicting the struggle of the South African people for their liberation under the banner of the African National Congress.” The photographs gathered here call </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">attention to the role of <a href="https://omeka.library.ualberta.ca/exhibits/show/photograpies/circulate-knowledge/1900-to-1969">documentary photography</a> in political activism, and are related to the tradition of </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">social documentary photographs</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">published in twentieth-century magazines like </span><a href="https://omeka.library.ualberta.ca/exhibits/show/photograpies/item/3045"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Life</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> At the time of this album’s publication, apartheid was still a reality in South Africa, and the fight referenced in the title was an urgent one. <br /><br />These photographs provide one example of photography's </span>potential to prompt action by establishing a “<a href="https://vimeo.com/25369128" target="_blank" rel="noopener">civil contract</a>” (Azoulay) between the people photographed and the viewer. However, given that <span style="font-weight: 400;">apartheid in South Africa continued well beyond the publication of these photographs, the album also points toward </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">the limitations of documentary photography</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. </span></p>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">A related photograph, taken in 1976, is Sam Nzima’s “</span><a href="http://100photos.time.com/photos/sam-nzima-soweto-uprising" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Soweto Uprising</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">,” which is sometimes credited with bringing international attention to apartheid. To learn more about apartheid in South Africa, visit</span><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight: 400;"> South African History Online</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. </span>
African National Congress (author)
photographers unknown
1969
29.5 x 41 cm
DT 763.6 A25 1969 folio
Adolf Hitler: Bilder aus dem Leben des Führers
<p><a href="https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/digital/collection/msiartifact/id/85/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cigarette albums</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> offer a different model for ways in which words and photographs could come together in a single volume. Albums like this one were sold with printed text and blank spaces for photographs; album owners would send in coupons that came with their packets of cigarettes to receive photographs to fill the blank spaces.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This example celebrates Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party and </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Führer</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and thereby demonstrates explicitly how photographs could be used to disseminate political ideologies. The album offers a counterpoint to publications such as </span><em><a href="https://omeka.library.ualberta.ca/exhibits/show/photograpies/item/3045">Life</a></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, which began publication in 1936 and was informed by very different ideologies. The album also provides further context for </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">John Heartfield’s <a href="https://omeka.library.ualberta.ca/exhibits/show/photograpies/item/3157">photomontages</a></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">, which drew on and remixed mass media images such as these photographs to critique the Nazi regime. <br /><br />Another <a href="https://omeka.library.ualberta.ca/exhibits/show/photograpies/item/3144">German cigarette album</a> housed in Bruce Peel Special Collections commemorates the 1936 Olympics.</span></p>
photographer unknown
1936
30.5 x 46.5 cm
NC 1883.6 G3 C57 1936 folio
South African War Through the Stereoscope
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN34QUEayzQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stereoscope<span style="font-weight: 400;"> technology</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> was developed to experiment with binocular vision, and later became a popular tool for both entertainment and instruction. Stereographs seen through the </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icbe2WSfw_Q" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight: 400;">stereoscope</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> offered such a convincing illusion of three-dimensional reality that some commentators, like the American doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes, suggested that “form is henceforth divorced from matter.” In his article entitled “</span><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1859/06/the-stereoscope-and-the-stereograph/303361/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Stereoscope and the Stereograph</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">,” published in 1859, he went on to explain that “matter as a visible object is of no great use any longer, except as the mould on which form is shaped. Give us a few negatives of a thing worth seeing taken from different points of view, and that is all we want of it.” <br /></span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This series of </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">stereocards</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> portraying the South African War, also known as the Boer War, informed viewers of world events while also offering a visual spectacle. These stereographs can be compared to other examples of war photography created earlier, like </span><a href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/ftncnw/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Roger Fenton’s photographs of the Crimean War</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> from 1855, and later, during the <a href="https://omeka.library.ualberta.ca/exhibits/show/photograpies/item/3130">world wars of the twentieth century</a> or the <a href="https://omeka.library.ualberta.ca/exhibits/show/photograpies/item/3164">fight against apartheid</a> in South Africa.<br /><br />Materials relating to the Boer War are included in the <a href="https://steele.library.ualberta.ca/theme/5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sir Samuel Steele Collection</a> at Bruce Peel Special Collections, which also includes <a href="https://steele.library.ualberta.ca/result.html?qq=*%3A*&fq=format%3A%22Photographs%22&sort=&start=10" target="_blank" rel="noopener">photographs</a>. For more information about this particular series of stereocards published by Underwood & Underwood, see "</span><a href="http://www.theheritageportal.co.za/article/anglo-boer-war-stereo-photographs-produced-underwood-underwood" class="active" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Anglo-Boer War: Stereo Photographs produced by Underwood & Underwood</a>."</p>
Underwood & Underwood (photographer)
1900-1901
8.8 x 17.7 cm
DT 930 S72
The Changing of the Guard
<p><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Changing of the Guard: Graphic Incidents of the Two World Wars</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> provides examples of <a href="https://omeka.library.ualberta.ca/exhibits/show/photograpies/circulate-knowledge/1900-to-1969">photojournalism</a> created by “official and other photographers” and collected into a commemorative album published in Australia. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Some of the action shots included in the album point toward advances in photographic technology in the twentieth century, and are reminiscent of photojournalist </span><a href="http://100photos.time.com/photos/robert-capa-d-day" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Robert Capa</a>'<span style="font-weight: 400;">s well-known photographs from World War II. </span></p>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">Compare these examples of war photography, taken with twentieth-century technologies like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0eIH69QWd8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gelatin film</a> and <a href="https://www.shutterbug.com/content/leica-i-camera-change-photography" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Leica cameras</a>, and reproduced as <a href="https://omeka.library.ualberta.ca/exhibits/show/photograpies/item/3044">halftones</a>, with nineteenth-century war photography, such as the examples contained within </span><a href="https://omeka.library.ualberta.ca/exhibits/show/photograpies/item/3133"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">South African War Through the Stereoscope</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span>
photographers unknown
1943
28.0 x 44.5 cm
DU 116 C45 1943
Life Magazine
<p><a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/life-photo-collection?date=1956" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Life</span></i></a> <span style="font-weight: 400;">is among the most famous of the twentieth-century picture magazines, and some of the century's most <a href="https://reyherphoto.com/time-life-photojournalists-iconic-photos/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">iconic photographs</a> were published in its pages. This first issue of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Life</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, from 1936,</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">features a photograph by <a href="https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/margaret-bourke-white?all/all/all/all/0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Margaret Bourke-White</a> on its cover. A full scan of this issue is available through the <a href="https://archive.org/details/Life_Magazine_v01n01_Nov_23_1936_/mode/2up" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Internet Archive</a>.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Picture magazines like </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Life</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> used the </span><a href="https://omeka.library.ualberta.ca/exhibits/show/photograpies/item/3044"><span style="font-weight: 400;">halftone process</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, which allowed photographs to be printed efficiently alongside text. Magazines began employing photo editors to create innovative and eye-catching layouts, such as the ones seen here. To consider the changing aesthetic of photojournalism, compare </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Life</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">’s photographs and layout with the illustrated news report from 1868 on </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">the <a href="https://omeka.library.ualberta.ca/exhibits/show/photograpies/item/3049">Trial of Patrick J. Whelan</a>.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The <a href="https://omeka.library.ualberta.ca/exhibits/show/photograpies/circulate-knowledge/1900-to-1969">documentary photographs</a> published in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Life </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">follow a tradition of social documentary photography that emerged in the late-nineteenth century with photographers <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91981589" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jacob Riis</a> and <a href="http://100photos.time.com/photos/lewis-hine-cotton-mill-worker" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lewis Hine</a>. Bourke-White took part in this tradition with her photographs documenting poverty in the American South, which were published alongside the writings of Erskine Caldwell in </span><a href="https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibition/margaret-bourke-white-you-have-seen-their-faces" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">You Have Seen Their Faces</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Around the same time that Bourke-White was photographing the American South, the American government’s <a href="https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_14.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Farm Security Administration</a> started hiring photographers like <a href="http://100photos.time.com/photos/dorothea-lange-migrant-mother" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dorothea Lange</a> and <a href="https://www.nga.gov/education/teachers/lessons-activities/uncovering-america/parks-photography.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gordon Parks</a> to record the effects of the Depression in America. <br /><br />Other examples of photojournalism included in this exhibition include <a href="https://omeka.library.ualberta.ca/exhibits/show/photograpies/item/3130"><em>The Changing of the Guard</em></a> and <a href="https://omeka.library.ualberta.ca/exhibits/show/photograpies/item/3164"><em>The Fight against Apartheid!</em></a></span></p>
Margaret Bourke-White (photographer)
1936
21.8 x 33.6 cm
AP 2 L72 v.1, no.1 1937