Photography and history: a view from Southern Africa

Abstract

In this ‘Conversation’ piece, Professors Patricia Hayes and Elizabeth Edwards discuss the relationship between photography and history as it manifests itself through the photographic legacies of Southern Africa. The specific historical experience of the Southern Africa has given rise to a realisation of the potential of photographs as drivers for historical thinking and analysis, the way photographs ‘move history forward’. The Conversation addresses major questions that resonate through the discourse and politics of global photographies—about the conditions of visibility, the problematics of Western photo-theory and of the language of photographic and historiographical analysis as viewed from the Global South.