Davina Jogi
https://doi.org/10.60152/c5cc6ky9
Abstract: As a Zimbabwean documentary photographer trained and working in southern Africa, I have been conscious of the shift from the centre to the margins in photographic discourse that is redefining how photography is perceived, practiced and taught globally. In this paper I intend to outline this move away from eurocentric knowledge structures, methodologies and practices towards what are considered decolonial photographic practices as described by Rolando Vázquez Melken (2024). Exploring the impetus behind this transition, the paper will investigate what role informal, grassroots and community-based African institutions have played as agents of change. Photography’s entanglement with the domination and erasure of colonized people is becoming more thoroughly understood and appreciated through the work of theorists such as Mark Sealy (2018) and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay (2019). This reality compromises the way the medium has long been taught, utilized and interpreted in post colonial cultures. Further complicating the situation across Africa, I suggest that the institutions of photography education and research have limited reach and are often siloed from commercial and media related image making, which serves to perpetuate problematic representations of the continent. Utilizing my experience as a student of the Market Photo Workshop (MPW) in South Africa, a founding director of the Zimbabwe Association of Female Photographers (ZAFP) and more recently, a PhD candidate carrying out practice-based research in photography, the paper will explore what decolonial photography education looks like in an African context. Informal associations and organisations like The Other Vision (Sudan), Unpublished Africa (Zimbabwe-based) and Espace Partage Photo (Mali) are arguably creating a new photography pedagogy which has naturally emerged from this necessity to use the photographic medium against itself. The paper proposes that these local responses may be relevant to other contexts with shared colonial histories.
Keywords: decolonial photography, photography pedagogy, African photography
How to cite this Paper (Harvard referencing style):
Jogi, D. (2025) ‘Towards an informal photography pedagogy on the African continent‘, in R. Bogdanović (ed.) On Architecture — Crosscutting and Fusion of Disciplines, Proceedings. Belgrade, Serbia: STRAND, pp. 64–73.
See publication On Architecture (2025) Conference Proceedings