Professor Jeff Guy is a Research Fellow at the Campbell Collections of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Since 2007 he has invoved with Tradition, Authority and Power (TAP) - a research project led by Jeff Guy and run from the Campbell Collections.
In his final lecture in this semester’s lecture series ‘The Public Face of African Scholarship’ Professor Jeff Guy continues the theme of visuality in African studies by demonstrating the importance of seeing photographs as history, not mere illustrations of history. He takes his examples from some of the remarkable photographs of African leaders in colonial Natal, showing how some were able to gain control of their image and use it in their cause, and others had their image torn from them. However, by examining the changing technologies of photography within an historical context, he is able to argue that ultimately, it was the photographic image which was able to assert itself in the anti-colonial cause.
On Wednesday 24 October 2007, at 18:00 the Campbell Collections Lecture series "The Public Face of African Scholarship" will continue to explore the theme of visuality and African studies. In an illustrated lecture about the work they’ve been doing on the digital restoration of rock painting, Jeff Guy and Justine Wintjes consider the role of computer technology and the image, and the application of digital technology to the preservation of what some believe to be southern Africa's greatest, and most vulnerable, contribution to the world's artistic heritage.
LECTURE SERIES BY JEFF GUY ORGANISED BY THE CAMPBELL COLLECTIONS
UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL
Over the last decade the concept of visuality has gained increasing interest and attention. We tend to take for granted the existence of images not just in the material world but in our (image)inations. But immediately we begin to think about what images are and what they do, we are confronted with a mass of difficulties about not just pictures and our view of the external world, but the images that we create within our minds. While these lectures have been conceptualised within the framework of debates around visuality, they are not so specialised as to alienate a general audience. Indeed they are situated in the world with which we are familiar. They build on photographic material from our own province, KwaZulu-Natal.