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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
‘Telling different stories’. Missionary Photography in S.E. Belgian Congo
| Panel |
70. Trading Places: Knowledge Production and Transfer between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa - the Missionary Context
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| Paper ID | 285 |
| Author(s) |
Maxwell, David James
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | The paper will discuss the photography of W.F.P Burton, pioneer of the Congo Evangelistic Mission in South East Belgian Congo. Burton was a great polymath, a botanist, cartographer, collector, ethnographer, photographer and artist. Most importantly he was a Faith missionary. His ethnographic and photographic collections have attracted the interest of scholars but to date his scientific work has been viewed in isolation from the main body of his missionary endeavours. Beside his ‘scientific’ work Burton took numerous other photographs for religious and personal purposes.
The paper will situate Burton’s photography in the varied contexts in which he operated -- intellectual, missionary, colonial and African -- and illustrate how he produced different, seemingly contradictory, visual narratives for different audiences.
It will be argued that these separate collections need to be drawn together and viewed as a whole in order to grasp how Burton constructed his missionary enterprise and how he viewed his Baluba subjects.
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