How Painted Backdrops link Photographic studios: A case from Cameroon

Abstract

The model of intellectual genealogy formed by relationships between masters and apprenticeships is used to help understand patterns of connection among studio photographers in Cameroon from the 1970s and 1980s. Chains of apprenticeships between photographers existed parallel to those between painters and their apprentices. Painted backdrops were moved between studios and gifts of backdrops marked the end of an apprenticeship as a new studio was established. The networks thus established bridged the anglophone and francophone divide as conventionally seen between the Ouest/West Region and the NorthWest Region. Photography as a form of modernity defied boundaries. Photographers and painters with the painted backdrops that connected them formed networks relatively little affected by political divisions.