Amanda Anderson - Symposium Abstract

Envisioning Africa: Western Perspectives on Imaging Africa

We are living today in a society saturated with images, and revolving around the visual and the ability of a quick glance to teach us all we may ever know about a subject. Images are central to shaping our understanding of the subjects they portray. In the case of Africa, popular understanding of the continent is mediated and constructed by the images we consume in our everyday lives. In my senior research, I focus on three case studies to examine the visual representation of Africa: popular advertisement, Hollywood films and museum sites. Specifically, I argue that these sites of representation make a space for Americans to imagine a relationship between themselves and Africa. These case studies image specific power relations between the two continents, further perpetuating America’s stereotypical view of Africa. Through each of these sites of representation Africa is made accessible to the everyday visual consumer.

To undertake this analysis I refer to the scholarship of historian Curtis Keim, and visual culture scholars Nicholas Mirzoeff, Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright. Keim argues that Americans’ pervasive views of Africa may be largely attributed to its representation in western media, while visual culture scholars argue that images are central to shaping our understanding of the subjects they portray. In the case of Africa, popular understanding of the continent is mediated by the images we consume. As visual consumers, we take in images of the continent to shape our perspective, including majestic animals on safari and idyllic scenes depicted on the pages of National Geographic. At the same time, images of poverty, illness and conflict in Africa are frequently pictured in various print and digital media. The pictures of refugees in Darfur and HIV/AIDs victims in South Africa are broadcast on the evening news or covered in Newsweek. For many Americans, popular visual culture is the primary way they learn about Africa, and the message they receive is that Africa needs their help.

In my first section, focusing on the branding of Africa in western visual culture, I examine two subsets within popular advertising that use cause related marketing, (Product) Red and Vanity Fair's Special Issue dedicated to Africa. My summer research focused on this section and my thesis probes the meaning making dynamics of celebrity enfranchisement, redemption through giving, commodity consumption, the photographic framing device and the gaze, and the interplay of text and images.  I further incorporate these images into my examination of the place of visual experience in the relationship formed between Africa and the United States. Through visual consumption, America’s buying power and the glamorization of involvement with Africa, Americans are taught that Africa needs our help and that we are in a position to provide it.

My research also examines the imaging of Africa in popular films such as Blood Diamond and Hotel Rwanda. Such representations of Africa present a world of imperialist nostalgia, where the white person conquers the colonial landscape and Africa is imaged as a space of violence and death. Each film presents the west, or western characters, as crucial for the survival of African characters, and thus Africa as a whole. These films serve as informal tools for picturing these inaccessible lands while reinforcing the American visual consumer’s stereotypes about Africa as "the Dark Continent."

My final case study deals with the National Museum of African Art’s permanent “African Vision” exhibit and the permanent exhibit on Africa at Chicago’s Field Museum to explore how these institutions are spaces that further mediate our understanding of Africa and teach us how the exotic lives in our popular imagination. In these authoritative, institutional spaces viewers are treated to Africa’s beautiful and cultural aspects rather than the poverty and conflict represented in my other case studies. It is also important to distinguish that museums serve the public audience and are meant to educate, rather than simply entertain visitors. My analysis draws upon research visits to these museum sites and interviews with a selection of other visitors in order to understand their experience with the exhibitions.

I use these three case studies to examine specific images as critical to mediating and understanding Africa. My analysis also considers how such images, whether popular or educational, provide American visual consumers with spaces to create and envision their relationship with Africa.