A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (History of Art), March 2017 / Within this research report, I explore how the (re-)integration of writing and photography enhances
an understanding of the role of the personal within documentary practices. I focus on a portion of
the Frobenius Archive as my case study, specifically the documents produced during the five-week
Natal leg of the ninth expedition in early 1929.
The German Leo Frobenius (b.1873–d.1938) was a primarily self-taught Africanist ethnographer,
who had an interdisciplinary practice that blurred the boundaries between anthropology,
archaeology and history. He conducted a total of twelve expeditions within Africa between 1904
and 1935, and his objective on these expeditions was to record ways of life that he felt were
vulnerable to changes due to modernity.
The documents collected during the Natal leg consist of field notes, photographs, hand-drawn
pictures and diary entries. The field notes comprise of a set of eleven rock art site descriptions that
have been constructed by the three artists: Maria Weyersberg, Elisabeth Mannsfeld and Agnes
Schulz. Weyersberg’s diary entries provide a more impressionistic set of notes, tracking the day-today
unfolding of their journey (but with many gaps). The subject matter of the photographs ranges
from the rock art sites and the landscapes these sites are a part of, to the people they encountered
along the way. I engaging with the concept of writing, particularly through the example of
Weyersberg’s personal diaries, and the ways in which these entries relate to the photographs,
creating a space in between where the personal relationships would have played themselves out.
Within this research report I demonstrate that writing and photography can be brought back
together in order to restore something of the original encounter and that this (re-)integration offers
an opportunity for a new dialogue and a new understanding to be achieved. / MT2018
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/23894 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Ananmalay, Kiyara |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | Online resource (72 leaves), application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
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