Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

From Congo: newspaper photographs, public images and personal memories

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 25; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1472586x.2010.502669

1472-5878

Linda Devereux,

Participatory Visual Research Methods

Abstract Objects, including photographs, offer a significant aid to memory and how people process past events. Family photography and family photograph albums can be important tools for preserving memories and creating shared family narratives. However, some important family events may not be represented in family photographs. In my family, for instance, some of the most significant events that took place are not recorded in traditional family albums, but through images that appeared in newspapers. My grandmother collected an archive of photographs of my family through newspaper clippings. The images document events that took place in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the postcolonial years immediately following independence. However, whether family photographs in a family album or newspaper photographs in a daily paper, images are cultural artefacts, censored and mediated by dominant social discourses. They will echo popular tropes and reflect the historical, cultural and political influences of the time. Drawing on insights from scholarship on family photography, cultural memory and trauma, this paper offers an analysis of the significance of the personal and the public use of photographs. Linda Devereux grew up in Africa, Scotland and Australia. She teaches in the early childhood and literacy education programs at the University of Canberra. Linda has also worked as the director of tertiary academic support services, and as a classroom teacher in a variety of settings including teaching in one of the most remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory of Australia. Linda researches and publishes in the field of literacy development, including how to help children make meaning from and create visual and multimodal texts. Her current doctoral work is an examination of childhood memory. Notes [1] Negrine (Citation1994) classifies these papers as 'popular' rather than 'quality' ones. The majority of the images come from regional versions of the paper, and so have an emphasis on 'local' news and on a 'relationship with the local community' (Brown Citation1978 ). Though a full analysis of the images used to accompany newspaper stories on DRC is beyond the scope of this paper, an examination of the images in The Times (classified by Negrine as a quality paper) between 1960 and 1964 reveals none of the 'domestic' family images I discuss here. [2] It has taken this author 10 years since being given the photographs to begin to work out how and where she might begin to discuss them. [3] For more information on this part of DRC history, see Gondola Citation2002 and Renton, Seddon, and Zeilig Citation2007. [4] Google Earth, accessed 26 October 2009. I noticed, on a final editing of this paper (March 2010) that the Google Earth image has changed: the old ferry is no longer visible in the image. [5] This image, and the one I discuss later, was saved as part of a complete page from each newspaper. This means that the date and newspaper can be identified. Some of the clippings do not have information that identifies their source or date. [6] The Daily Mail (and its regional subsidiaries) were regarded as 'popular' newspapers and exploited a 'demand for reading and entertainment' (Negrine Citation1994, 59), though Negrine argues that research confirms print media are the means by which the public acquires information about the world and current social and political problems. [7] Photographs and films of the Congolese visits to Belgium were on display in the Royal Museum for Central Africa as part of a temporary exhibition, Expo 58 at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, between 18 April and 19 October 2008. Sliwinski (Citation2006, 360) offers interesting examples of how such exhibitions fuelled popular conceptions of Africa in the nineteenth century. [8] Moise Tshombe had not supported Lumumba's quest for a national Congolese government, and was suspected of collusion with Belgian interests when he led the Katanga revolt immediately after independence. For more information on this part of DRC history, see Gondola Citation2002 and Renton, Seddon, and Zeilig Citation2007. [9] Survivor accounts are published in a number of places; see, for example, reports in The Scotsman, 26 November 1964. [10] For an analysis of the use of 'mug shots' in photographs of missing people, see Sturken Citation1999. [11] Sliwinski (Citation2006, 335) argues that, similarly, despite the huge loss of life in Congo in the early colonial period and a vigorous UK media campaign against human rights abuses, 'this history remains at the edges of contemporary consciousness'.