Hamilton and Mahashe present at Leiden symposium exploring photographic modernities

George Tebogo Mahashe and Carolyn Hamilton drinking tea out of fine bone china cups conferred by anthropologist Eileen Krige on the next generation anthropologist, her student, later professor, Eleanor Preson Whyte, who, in turn, conferred the tea cups on Hamilton, who will, in turn, in time, confer them on Mahashe

NRF Chair in Archive and Public Culture, Professor Carolyn Hamilton and APC research fellow, George Tebogo Mahashe, participated in the symposium, Framing the Archive: New Directions in Photographic Traditions and Modernities, which was held at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in October 2011. 

Hamilton gave a specially invited public lecture on The Life of Archive, along with Karen Strassler, Professor of Anthropology at Queens College-CUNY.

'... I find it more useful to think about the biography of an archive, rather than its history. Histories of archives generally confine themselves to an understanding of archives as things,' reads Hamilton's introductory text. 'The real meat in a history of an archive lies in the story of its making and the narrative typically ends once the collection is safely installed in a formal archival setting. If dealt with at all, subsequent developments are invariably postscripts of one sort or another because changes, the heart-beat of any history, are by definition, the antithesis of the archival endeavour.'

Strassler, whose research focuses on images, visuality, and media in postcolonial Indonesia, spoke on The Person and the Archive.

Mahashe presented his current work on Dithugula tša Malefokane: Framing the ethnographic photographic archive at Iziko South African Museum made by EJ and JD Krige in Bolobedu. Both contributions generated significant discussion, while the APC members' account of the Initiative's preliminary work on the Archives and Ancestors was the focus of much attention.

Both APC members participated in a round of discussions with Leiden graduate students working on archives and photography.