 | This portrait of a child by Casimir Zagourski is one of the images on display in "Disappearing Africa." |
Images of "Disappearing Africa" are on view in a new exhibition now in the nave of Yale's Sterling Memorial Library.
The display, featuring Casimir Zagourski's photographic portraits of African life and culture, will be on view through Feb. 28.
Zagourski, of Polish parentage, was born in the Ukraine in 1880. After a military career in the Russian air force and the Polish army, he left Eastern Europe in 1924 and settled in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa), Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of Congo). There, he established his career as a photographer.
Over the next 17 years, until his death in 1941, Zagourski traveled throughout the Belgian Congo, and the former French Congo, as well as in what is now Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Kenya, Central African Republic and the western reaches of Tanzania. Though other photographers were active in the Congo, Zagourski distinguished himself for the vast amount of territory he covered. He was the first to systematically cover Central Africa and as such, documented an era and cultures perched on the precipice of change due to increasing colonial occupation.
The African Collection at Yale has acquired hundreds of Zagourski's photos. These images "have become superb historical ethnographic documents, reflecting cultural practices long since replaced," according to Dorothy C. Woodson, curator of the African Collection at Sterling Memorial Library.
While the images represent a variety of aspects of everyday life, such as housing styles, initiation ceremonies, hairstyles and women at work, Zagourski's specialty was portraiture.
"Through these photos and, indeed through his title for the photos in this exhibit, 'L'Afrique Qui Disparait!' ('Disappearing Africa'), he presaged the impending changes and assimilation that would be brought by spreading colonization," says Woodson.
"His portraits differ from others taken at the same time and in the same regions, because he treated the Africans he photographed as subjects rather than objects," she adds. "Notice how we observe them at eye-level and how they return our gaze. Zagourski photographed people from below eye level, to create this feel. Unlike many of his contemporaries, his photos of women, in particular, are respectful, rather than prurient or vulgar."
The Sterling Memorial Library, 120 High St., is open for exhibition viewing Monday-Thursday 8:30 a.m.-11:45 p.m.; Friday 8:30 a.m.-9:45 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.-6:45 p.m.; and Sunday noon-11:45 p.m. Admission is free. For information, visit the website at www.library.yale.edu/rsc/sml or call (203) 432-2798.
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