The Walther Collection

Conceptual Framework

Poetics and Politics, the culmination of the series "Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive," presents vintage portraits, cartes de visite, postcards, and album pages produced in the 1870s to the early twentieth century in Southern and Eastern Africa. This exhibition reveals the complexity of the African photographic archive, exploring in particular the experience of the studio and the encounter between photographer and subject. The images on view make visible the ideological frameworks that prevailed during the colonial era in Africa and the extraordinary skill of photographers working in the studio and the landscape.

For further information, please see our exhibition guide.