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Representation/Self-representation: A
Tale of Two Portraits; or, Portraits and
Social Science Representations
David Zeitlyn
Published online: 09 Oct 2010.

To cite this article: David Zeitlyn (2010) Representation/Self-representation: A Tale of Two Portraits;
or, Portraits and Social Science Representations, Visual Anthropology: Published in cooperation with
the Commission on Visual Anthropology, 23:5, 398-426, DOI: 10.1080/08949460903472978

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 Visual Anthropology, 23: 398–426, 2010
Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0894-9468 print=1545-5920 online
DOI: 10.1080/08949460903472978

Representation=Self-representation: A Tale
of Two Portraits; or, Portraits and Social
Science Representations
David Zeitlyn
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The problem of representation is profound for anthropology: how do representation

and represented relate? What motivates or warrants bridges over the inevitable dis-
connection between the two? I suggest that photographs and portraits provide a rich
basis for thinking about the particular sorts of warrant for anthropological represen-
tation. My most general suggestion is that anthropological representation may be
conceived of as a form of portraiture, and that it is an exercise in ekphrasis (a verbal
account or evocation of a typically non-present image or object). Portraits need social
conventions (such as a name in the caption) to be taken as such; representation is a
three-part relationship between object, image and society. Cases from Cameroonian
studio photography and a portrait of Marilyn Strathern exemplify the argument.

This article presents an anthropological approach to the large theoretical

(philosophical) issue of representation. It would be easy to spend a lifetime exam-
ining the extensive literatures in several different subject areas which all bear
directly on the subject. As a field-working anthropologist I do not think the
philosophical problems can be resolved directly. Rather than simply reflecting
on the problem, I want to approach the topic obliquely, through the examination
of particular cases. I will use photographic representation, and portraiture in
particular, as lenses through which to examine the larger question of social
science representation.
In other papers I examine the topic of ekphrasis (the verbal evocation of ima-
gery; see below for references and further discussion1). I have also used the idea
of a silhouette as a way of approaching the exercise of biography or life writing
when working on the life history of a single Mambila woman, Diko Madeleine
[Zeitlyn 2008]. These combine in the suggestion that anthropological accounts
or representations may be conceived as a form of portraiture. I believe that this
provides an interestingly different way to approach the practice of anthropology.

DAVID ZEITLYN is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK,

where he has taught since 1995. He has been conducting field research in Cameroon since 1985,
mainly with Mambila people on the Tikar Plain. Recently he has been working with Cameroonian
studio photographers, which led to an exhibition at the London National Portrait Gallery in 2005
and a major archiving project funded by the British Library’s endangered archives program. E-mail:
[email protected]

398
 Representation/Self-representation 399

As a first step to exploring this suggestion I shall consider some images that
might be described or used as portraits. I take it as encouraging that it is not
as straightforward as it may at first seem to distinguish a portrait from other
visual representations; the issue is complex, which well suits the tasks of anthro-
pology. As is common in our discipline, I look for answers through the consider-
ation of case studies. Here I consider case studies not so much of how to identify
portraits but rather of how portraits are used and made.
Some objects (visual or verbal) are used as representations of other things.
How should the relationship between the two be characterized? This key
philosophical question has particular relevance in contemporary anthropology,
where politically motivated concerns about who can represent whom have led
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some to call for the end of all acts of representation. But this would make anthro-
pology (and all social science) impossible, and does not recognize the social
necessity of representation: hunters classify a distant animal as edible or inedible,
partitioning the world according to their representational strategy; similarly, both
kin terms and national or ethnic labels divide the social world into manageable
groups of people with whom we can have very different affective and social
relationships.
There is another philosophical problem: our accounts and explanations are
couched in terms such as class, ethnicity and economic status, which are our aca-
demic representations of how the world is. Yet we only see individual tokens
(such as a ‘‘person’’), not types (the generic ‘‘human’’). This dilemma inspired
Galton’s attempts at picturing an average face as a ‘‘composite.’’ It raises ques-
tions about the basis of our use of generic terms. This conundrum affects even
those who are undertaking large-scale questionnaire research [Williams 2003].
Approaches to the problem of representation affect the way that research is
conducted and the kinds of record kept as ‘‘data.’’ Hence, a theoretical and
philosophical enquiry can have practical consequences. It may also have social
significance: another version of the problem is that we only see individual tokens
(people), not generic ethnicities (and yet perception of ethnicity is widespread if
not universal).
Postmodern approaches to this are increasingly seen as being as limited and
as flawed as those that they sought to replace. We urgently need new paradigms
of representation to ground the discipline between the extremes of ‘‘anything
goes relativism’’ and ‘‘simple minded realism’’ (often castigated as ‘‘positivism’’
without reference to or appreciation of Comte’s arguments). Accepting the
importance of social construction in social science2 does not mean that our work
is free from constraint by ‘‘external reality’’ [Zeitlyn 2009b]. As Lakoff and John-
son put it, ‘‘eliminating simple minded realism does not eliminate all forms of
realism, and it does not require either idealism or total relativism’’ [1999: 233].
Representation is discussed in many different literatures: philosophical [e.g.,
Rorty 1979 and Judge 1985], psychological [e.g., Kosslyn 1980; Johnson-Laird
1983; Potter 1996; Gergen 1994], in visual anthropology [including film; e.g.,
Banks and Morphy 1997; Pink 2001; Ruby 2000; Grimshaw 2001 and Okely
20013] visual sociology [e.g., Chaplin 1994], art history [e.g., Gombrich 1960; Tagg
1988 and Mitchell 1994a], and in several disciplines (including Cultural Studies)
as visual rhetoric [e.g., Tufte 1990; Bonsiepe 19994]. All these large literatures are
 400 D. Zeitlyn

relevant to anthropology where the problem is often alluded to but little dis-
cussed as a practical problem. Empirical case studies raise theoretical challenges
that relate to classical debates about representation. Aristotelian distinctions
between mimesis, diegesis and exegesis have a contemporary relevance which
affects what is taken as data (what we deem relevant and worthy of analysis).
To these I add ekphrasis, which began as a term in rhetoric for the description
of non-existent works of art (either mythic objects such as Achilles’ Shield or lost
classical works of sculpture [Heffernan 1991; Mitchell 1994b; Jurkevich 1999 and
Ramos 2004: 147]). It has been generalized to the use of language to describe
images or to evoke imagery. When giving a social science account, we filter the
analysis through theoretical concepts and construct (more or less) abstracted
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models of events in such a way that connections can be made to phenomena

on the ground. My contention is that ekphrasis (or a term like it) is necessary
to help us think about the gap between representation and the subject repre-
sented and the ways that gap is to be bridged. Despite a considerable amount
of research over the last two decades the problem has not been solved. Ekphrastic
social science holds the promise of visual and narrative sensitivity in an empiri-
cally responsible fashion. Contrasting studies of portraiture in different cultural
contexts will clarify and test how theory can resolve these dilemmas.

PORTRAITS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE REPRESENTATION

Images are problematic and have a strange status in social science in general and
anthropology in particular. They are not so much disregarded as bracketed off,
gestured towards, and yet not taken seriously; visual anthropology remains a
sub-field, it is not part of the mainstream which is dominated by models derived
from linguistics and textual analysis. Yet our language is full of visual metaphor
(a starting-point for the critiques of Rorty [1979] and Fabian [1983: 105 ff.]). By
concentrating on images I hope that I will be better able to approach some key
general problems of how we, as practicing social scientists, produce representa-
tions of ourselves and others. Portraits raise problems that are in pointed contrast
to conventional social science representation. This contrast becomes even sharper
when we consider self-portraits, the way in which someone represents himself to
others. Self-portraiture raises the question of whether this is profoundly (or at all)
different from how an ordinary person, in his everyday life, presents his own
persona to others. How can we as social scientists approach such questions? This
takes us back to the issues of presentation and definition of self raised 50 years
ago by Goffman [1959].
Portraiture raises many questions about representation. What are the necessary
and sufficient conditions for an image to be regarded, or to be used, as a portrait?
Similitude is not enough. A portrait, be it painted, drawn or photographic, is
unlike its object in far more ways than it is like that person. For instance, portraits
are typically flat, small, unresponding, and cool to the touch. These are trivial
objections, but they point to a larger issue: there are social conventions at play
which determine what is and what is not a trivial objection. Less trivial is the
question of how objects should be represented in words or images.
 Representation/Self-representation 401

There is a large literature in art history and elsewhere which I can only touch
upon here (Shearer West [2004] provides a general survey of the subject from the
art historical tradition; see also Freeland [2007] on differences and common
ground between painted and photographic portraits). Among the more note-
worthy aspects is the relationship between portraits and likenesses. Both must
be recognizably linked to an individual, but not all likenesses are portraits and
not all portraits are likenesses, as shown by the examples below. Two quotations
from important discussions of portraiture must suffice here to indicate the com-
plexity of the topic. Richard Brilliant notes that ‘‘a portrait requires identification
as the justification of its purpose and of its pretensions to portray. Despite the
artist’s intention to portray a specific individual, not every project of that inten-
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tion may actually be a portrait’’ [1990: 13]. For Jean Borgatti, ‘‘the correct
portrait . . . is not a faithful record of a visual experience but the faithful construc-
tion of a relational mddel’’ [1990: 36]. The second of these quotations connects
closely with Webb Keane and Brenda Judge’s (separate but similar) views of
‘‘representation as process,’’ which I discuss below. Both also connect directly
with the idea of ekphrasis: a passport photograph is judged good or bad, accept-
able or misleading by reference to the physiognomy of the human being who is
the passport holder. In the absence of the human the image is ‘‘taken’’ to evoke or
represent the human. However, as a large literature discusses and an even larger
set of examples demonstrates, there are many ways in which ‘‘taking to rep-
resent’’ can operate, and many types of individual representation which are
not portraits, gravestones being an obvious example (another is illustrated below:
the case of ‘‘achievements’’ or objects that serve as metonyms for important facets
of a person’s life).
For Kendall Walton [1990], representations are props for the imagination of
others: I represent X to you, and the representation works (partly) because of
your participation. We jointly play the game of representation, a game which
for Walton is not so much a Wittgensteinian language game but more like a chil-
dren’s game of make-believe. For Walton, when we jointly use representations (it
might be that ‘‘collude in the use of’’ is a better phrasing), we are more like
children playing with dolls than (allegedly) grown-up academics thinking about
images.
This puts an emphasis on the participation of the audience (Walton uses
the term ‘‘appreciator’’ as in ‘‘the appreciator of a fiction,’’ but his argument
is that fictions are a special class of representations that can help understand
the others [1990: 272–273]). Concern with the audience or the targets of
representation makes ekphrasis and a relational model of representation all
the more appropriate. To understand what is going on we have to ask about
the purposes of the representation, the intentions of the creator and (inde-
pendent of that) the uses to which the representation is put by its audience.
Ekphrasis sits well in this, as it brings the appreciators and the purposes of
the representation into consideration.
Discussing portraiture Walton writes:

We must not overemphasise the causal relation that obtains between paintings and photo-
graphs done from life and the life they are done from. Fra Filippo Lippi used a local nun,
 402 D. Zeitlyn

Lucrezia Buti, as a model for his Madonna della Cintola. She posed for the picture just as
many a nobleman has posed for his portrait. Yet Madonna della Cintola is not in the same
sense a portrait of Lucrezia. She is not its object: rather the biblical Mary is. The imaginings
prescribed are about Mary, not about Lucrezia. [1990: 112]

We shall return to some of these issues in the concluding sections.

MIRRORING

A textbook on sociolinguistics is called Speak into the Mirror [Doe=Washabaugh

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1988]. Originally this was published under the authorship of John Doe, an anon-
ymizing pseudonym since the author did not want personalities to distract from
the text. For Lacan, mirroring is at the root of the persona, the basis of individu-
ality. ‘‘When in love, I solicit a look. What is profoundly unsatisfying and always
missing is that you never look at me from the place from which I see you. Conversely,
what I look at is never what I wish to see’’ [Lacan cited in Levine 1996: 96, emphasis
in original]. We recognize ourselves as our image—but this is a misrecognition
(méconnaissance,5 as Lacan called it).6 There are several possible answers to the
question ‘‘Who are you?’’ It can be answered by the uttering of a name, the state-
ment ‘‘It’s me’’ or the counter question ‘‘Can’t you see?’’7
We bounce words off other people the better to know or understand ourselves,
just as we look at light bouncing off reflective surfaces to discover how we look to
others. The photograph and the painted or drawn portrait ‘‘still the shadow,’’
allowing both ourselves and others to look at the same image, and even to
discuss it: we can talk about a look, about a facial expression or a quirk of the
shadows, secure in the knowledge that we are referring to a shared object of
attention, which paradoxically is not the look itself but its representation, for
example the physical object which is the photographic print. My suggestion is
that the relationship between the print and what it represents is best character-
ized as ekphrastic in order to highlight the complexity of the relationship.
I next discuss some examples. Readers are invited to reflect on how the dis-
cussion would work in the absence of the images discussed. The way in which
the textual account is read changes, and changes importantly, depending on
whether or not it can be read alongside (against) the image to which it refers. So
ekphrastics, the multiple relationships of representation, form a fundamental part
of our engagement with social science (whether or not we use the term ekphrasis).
The examples which I discuss next have been chosen as follows: first, to
explore the issue of portraiture and self-portraiture I consider some paintings
by Daphne Todd (particularly her portrait of Marilyn Strathern and a
self-portrait). To contrast with these painted portraits, and building on my cur-
rent field research, I then consider two photographs by a Cameroonian studio
photographer (a self-portrait and a photograph of a couple which raises issues
about how images are used).8 Possible readings of the photograph of a couple
are discussed in the light of bureaucratic and other uses of prints, and different
ways in which representation can be achieved by objects, be they painted
portraits, photographs or emblematic assemblages once called ‘‘achievement.’’
 Representation/Self-representation 403

PORTRAITURE AND SELF REPRESENTATION

When the portrait painter Daphne Todd began to paint her own portrait in a con-
vex mirror [Figure 1] it was as a self-conscious exercise in a tradition going back
to Rembrandt or before.9 The portrait was painted on invitation for an exhibition
of self-portraits by female portrait painters entitled ‘‘Mirror Mirror’’ [Rideal
2001].
I was able to interview her in late 2005. In our conversation she made the point
that the human eye discriminates in ways in which cameras do not, and which a
painting can replicate. As is well documented in psychology, the mental pro-
cesses of perception are complex and not straightforward: we do not experience
the visual in a direct act (or event) of apperception.
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However, Todd distanced herself from those who claim painted portraits as
exercises in psychology in a different sense: for her the challenge is to undo
the psychology of perception and to paint the colors she sees, rather than those
she knows she should be seeing; so oddly like a camera she concentrates her atten-
tion on what is literally superficial. She does not claim to have particular insight
into the personality of her sitters. Yet by presenting those outward clues to the
inner life, something about the sitter is conveyed, although this is an almost unin-
tended consequence of accurately depicting those outward signs. Here we have
an inversion of what Barbara Stafford discusses [1999] in the case of medical ima-
ging, which through technologies such as MRI is the reverse of superficial: they
actually show us what lies beneath the surface. But some might say that X-rays

Figure 1 Daphne Todd: Me in a Magnifying Mirror, 2000. (Courtesy of Daphne Todd).

 404 D. Zeitlyn

and brain scans reveal the body, not the person. They give none of the clues
about personality which portraits, even photographic portraits, are taken to
convey. Todd achieves this through her concentration on ‘‘outer appearance.’’
Some paintings attempt to convey the complexity of character and personality
by showing the subject from multiple viewpoints (most dramatically in cubism)
and my illustration is a celebrated example: Todd’s portrait of a hydra-headed
Marilyn Strathern, an important figure in contemporary British anthropology,
and here the object of an award-winning portrait [Figure 2].
She is shown in her study in Girton College (of which she is Mistress), both as
an academic poring over her writing, and as an anthropologist gazing out at the
viewer in the most direct of human engagements. Daphne Todd is not and does
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not claim to be an academic. In an interview with her that was published after her
portrait of Strathern won the 2001 Ondaatje portrait prize [Wollheim 2002], she
recounts how Strathern gave her an anthropological article about portraiture,
which she found ludicrous (as I fear she will find this essay). She told Professor
Strathern as much, which established a point of contact between them. Given her
disdain of academe, it is singularly ironic that her multifaceted portrait of
Strathern can be seen to exemplify Strathern’s idea of the partible person.10 All
the more so since her portrait is literally made up of parts: the brickwork on
the right hand side is painted on a second board and recessed. This is a style

Figure 2 Daphne Todd: Marilyn Strathern, Mistress of Girton, 2000. (Courtesy of Daphne
Todd and The Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge).
 Representation/Self-representation 405

which she uses in several of her paintings. The lines which frame her self-portrait
are not painted but gaps between different boards which have been joined
together, leaving explicit their constructedness. Her portrait of Trevor Trasker
in the 2000 People’s Portraits exhibition (on tour at Girton College, Cambridge
2006) is similarly constructed [Figure 3].
To obsess about the duplicated head in Strathern’s portrait is to misunderstand
the image, just as cubism confused its early audiences. A painting is better than a
photograph because it can bend, shift or combine moments in time. The artist
skilfully evokes her object without simply reproducing what was before her eyes
at any one moment in time. In order to portray the totality of what was before her
eyes during the prolonged exposure of the sitting process she painted the
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two-headed image.
In discussion with me (on February 1, 2006) Marilyn Strathern talked of experi-
encing the gaze of the painter, saying how disconcerting and at the same time
entrancing it was to be the object of such a fierce, resolute, intense scrutiny, yet
one that was not ‘‘looking at her’’ in the normal sense of the phrase. It meant that
she could not work, but sat, strangely liberated, the subject of the painter’s gaze.
We discussed whether there were other examples of such looking: by clinicians,

Figure 3 Daphne Todd: Trevor Trasker, cesspit emptier, 1999, part of the ‘‘People’s Portraits’’
Collection, Girton College, Cambridge. (Courtesy of Daphne Todd and The Mistress and Fellows,
Girton College, Cambridge).
 406 D. Zeitlyn

opticians, tailors, but none of these are good parallels: they all have specific foci.
Strathern said it reminded her of her first-born child, when all she wanted to do
was to gaze at her daughter, glorying in the extraordinariness of her baby; we
might speculate that her own mother had once gazed on her in the same way.
Perhaps the entrancing aspect of the painter’s gaze for her was that she experi-
enced such intensive scrutiny as an adult, who could experience it in ways other
than a baby does.
Next consider some images from Cameroon. Finlak’s self-portraits [Figure 4]
remind me of more celebrated self-portraits such as those of the Malian photogra-
pher Malik Sidibé. But while Sidibé is an urban sophisticate, Finlak is a rural
jobbing photographer. Many of his self-portraits were meant only as test shots,
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to check the apparatus was working. They resemble one of the plot twists of
Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s film Le Fabuleux destin d’Amé lie Poulain (released overseas
as Amé lie [2001]) in which the photo-booth repair man tests the booths by photo-
graphing himself and then tears up the results. For those who collect the discards
they are perplexing images; are they self-portraits?11
I shall now return to the theoretical issue of how social science accounts relate
to their objects, in particular, how verbal representations are connected to the
images or objects described. The larger problem raised by such accounts is the
question of whose is the story? Who is the teller, and who is the intended audi-
ence? Such questions fit well with Webb Keane’s [1997] stress on representation
as process: representation is not inherent in nature12 but is a social accomplish-
ment that human actors manage (usually successfully) between themselves.
It also parallels the philosopher Brenda Judge’s analysis of representation
as a three-way relation between object, representation (image=symbol) and
intention=community [1985]. In short, every representation is undertaken for a

Figure 4 Samuel Finlak: Self-portrait, ca. 1980.

 Representation/Self-representation 407

purpose, and this is not a solitary exercise. The stereotypical Robinson Crusoe, as
an ultimately isolated individual, has, as Wittgenstein argued [1953], no private
language. Gergen and Gergen have taken this further to argue that ‘‘One might
even question the possibility of individuals’ representing themselves, for to do so
would require that they appropriate the language of other persons. The solitary
individual would have no private voice, no language of private experience.
Without depending on the language of others, we cannot achieve intelligibility’’
[2000: 1034].
The issues of intelligibility and language are relevant to the topic of this essay,
without being directly addressed in it. In a companion piece [ms. 1] I discuss
what I call ‘‘the argument of images.’’ This is to use a metaphor that associates
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words with images. It is that metaphorical process which I want to query. This
is not to destroy, to deconstruct and then to abandon as impossible, but to enable
us to use our words, or story-tellings, knowingly and self-consciously, so our
words are measured and balanced against the silence beyond speech (early
Wittgenstein’s ‘‘whereof we cannot speak’’) and the speechlessness of the por-
trait image. Bryan Wolf characterizes this [1990] as the rhetorical claim that the
visual is silent, because it is outside any language. He calls this ‘‘closet ekphra-
sis,’’ the silencing of art. This he connects to a form of realism, verism, which
is the claim that the representation is necessarily retinal so we are shown what
we see. Wolf argues against verism’s claim that images are literally speechless.
That meaning is a social construct or achievement (rather than an individual state
of mind) is a position developed to deal with speech, but it applies just as well to
images. A portrait is mute when alone, when isolated, without a social context or
set of uses to give it meaning.
Let us now return to the idea of ekphrasis, and the links between words and
images. If images are silent and we see what we are shown, or rather we see what
we know to be seeable, then we see what we are expecting to find, even when we
are searching for the unknown. In the rarefied language of the former U.S.
Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, those are ‘‘known unknowns not unknown
unknowns’’: we know the sort of thing we’re looking for. David Hume starts his
account of causation with a discussion of miracles [1902: 114–116], in which the
underlying assumption is that miracles do not happen: he takes as an axiom that
a putative miracle is an ordinary event of unknown qualities, not an unknown
miraculous one. Similarly, when looking, we see the world as the type of thing
we know it to be.13 As an anthropologist I take this to apply to the social universe
as well as (and perhaps more so than) to the physical world. There are various
kinds of social relationship: with one’s friend, enemy, mother, colleague, student,
grant administrator and so on. These partition the world as a part of the activity
of representation. The type of account one may give is affected by the type of
relationship one has to the recipient. An example of this may be the very different
accounts given of the same fieldtrip to lover, mother, student and financial
administrator (processing the receipts).
Generalizing the argument means that when we talk about ‘‘seeing’’ and about
images we are talking about more than the narrowly visual, far more than just
about some marks on a screen in the ocular field of the viewer=reader. This
explains the move from ekphrasis as narrowly defined, applying to an image
 408 D. Zeitlyn

and its description, to the idea of ekphrastic social science, applying especially to
anthropological accounts and their objects. The ekphrastic representation builds
bridges between the raw materials (data and experience of the researcher) and
the understanding of the readers or audience, in what we hope is a principled
and systematic fashion so that the readers can follow how the conclusions have
been reached.

CAMEROONIAN STUDIO PHOTOGRAPHERS

In this section I move from the abstract to the concrete by considering a set of
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contrasts between some very different images.

When a Cameroonian citizen went to a local studio photographer to have a
photograph taken for her national identity card she was literally inscribing herself
into the nation state.14 After her death her children may take the card to another
photographer (or an anthropologist) to have the photograph (often the only image
of a deceased parent) copied for display on a wall: they are changing the represen-
tation. Another case is the post-mortem drawing of a cross on the forehead of a
photograph of someone who has died [Figure 5]. How can a corpus of such photo-
graphs be analyzed? They document a series of intentions about display, about the
presentation of self [Goffman 1959]. It is easy to write about but much harder to
document and justify this. To write an account is to represent other representa-
tions in a complex fashion and in a different medium. I cannot make an assertion
in a visual form, I must annotate. As Barthes [1977] and Benjamin [1968] have
argued (in different contexts), images are irredeemably textual.15
Clive Scott builds on their work in his book The Spoken Image [1999], in which he
examines the effect of captions and the ways in which narrative is achievable
in still photography (he contrasts film and photography to make this point).
Captions (and titles [1999: 49]) frame and hence change the image in the eyes of
the viewer. Returning to the post-mortem annotations, I see them as challenging
Scott’s use of Peirce’s distinction between the index and the icon, in which photo-
graphs are indexical and paintings iconic [1999: 40]. This returns us to ekphrasis. If
the relationship between a photographic print and the person portrayed is index-
ical (in several senses of the word) then drawing a cross on the surface of the print
marks a change in the relationship. It marks the print ceasing to be metaphorically
ekphrastic and instead becoming ekphrastic in its classic sense: the only record of
what the person looked like, it can no longer be compared with the original. In
Peirce’s terms we can no longer trace back the chains of indexicality. The photo-
graph is a trace that the viewer uses to construct (evoke) a person.16
Professional black and white photography in Cameroon grew especially after
the introduction of ID cards with photographs in the late 1950s.17 It has gradually
disappeared after the introduction of new identity cards in 1998. They were
issued complete with instant photographs, removing the need for ‘‘passport
photographs.’’ These had been produced easily using plates, then medium for-
mat film, since contact prints could be produced which were the correct size
for identity card photographs. Rural photographers could process and print
the film without needing access to electricity. A small supporting industry of
 Representation/Self-representation 409
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Figure 5 Chief Mogo Michel (d. 1977) and retainers, ca. 1970. Annotated by the late Gamgbe
Lucas, who is shown standing back right.

photographers (as celebrated by, e.g., Magnin 1997] has effectively been
destroyed by the computerized production of national identity cards and the
arrival of cheaper color 35 mm processing in the cities [Werner 1993: 53 cites a
parallel case in Togo, see too Gore 2001; Werner 2001; Appadurai 1997 for
discussion of painted backdrops, and Zeitlyn 2005a for more discussion of the
work of Finlak].
What kind of photographs were taken? Although the most common were
photographs taken for identity cards or other types of bureaucratic identification
(children for school, coffee farmers to obtain growers’ cards and so on) many
other types of photograph were also taken, in order to mark births, deaths, mar-
riages, the acquisition of prestigious items such as radios, motorcycles or sewing
machines, or to mark the visit of a family member from another town or village.
To give a sense of the distribution of different types of image consider Table 1
which is based on 304 negatives from the Photo Royale studio in Banyo
 410 D. Zeitlyn

TABLE 1 Types of photograph taken at the Photo Royale studio, Banyo

Mixed Other Christian or

Single Single Group of sex Group of (e.g., cars, Moslem
male female women group men Babies sport) events

86 (28%) 65 (21%) 45 (15%) 44 (14%) 34 (11%) 14 (5%) 12 (4%) 4 (1%)

(reputedly the oldest studio in the region). The photographer, who is unusual for
having preserved many negatives, was asked for a sample of his work and sent
me a box of some complete rolls of 120 film and other pairs of negatives. There
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was no record of the date at which the photos were taken (I estimate from dress it
was late 1980s or early 1990s). Since the pricing structure meant clients paid one
fee for prints and a further fee to have the negative as well as prints, most people
chose to leave negatives with the photographer, but it must be recognized that
some were taken, so the sample is incomplete (my enquiries to the photographers
have elicited no suggestion that any particular kind of negative was more likely
to be taken away than others). The deliberately simple typology identifies some
49 of portraits of single people, most of which were for bureaucratic purposes,
although some groups are also composed for identification cards (for example, a
group of children will be lined up in a single shot which will be enlarged and
printed to make several school cards from one negative).

Figure 6 (A) Finlak studio wall, 2003. (Photograph: David Zeitlyn). (B) Chila studio board,
ca. 1980.
 Representation/Self-representation 411

When Samuel Finlak posed for his own self-portrait a cynic might say it was to
calibrate his camera, to check that it worked. This is clearly not a sufficient
account. For example, I have a substantial collection of negatives taken by both
Samuel Finlak and another Cameroonian studio photographer, Joseph Chila.
The archives of their negatives suggest that it was only Finlak who regularly took
self-portraits. To check that the chemicals are still good or that the shutter works
correctly a photographer can take anything. To choose to represent oneself is a
deliberate act, even when enabled by one’s profession. Another aspect of this
is visible on the display boards of work that each photographer had in their stu-
dios [Figure 6]. Chila’s did not include a self-portrait, Finlak’s has three (includ-
ing a double exposure of himself as twins [see Sprague 1978 for Yoruba parallels]
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as well as a portrait of his father). From the negative archives we can present a
sequence of self-portraits which tell a story of self-examination and self-
presentation not dissimilar to Daphne Todd’s self-portrait.
Further research undertaken after the previous paragraphs were drafted
has revealed still further complexity. Chila also took self-portraits but unlike
Finlak he kept his personal negatives separately from his work photographs
so they did not enter the archive. That there is a difference between the two
photographers still stands but it is not as simple as making vs. not making
self-portraits.

AFFECTION IN PUBLIC
Public displays of affection among opposite sex adults are rare in rural
Cameroon. In public the only people of opposite sexes likely to openly display
affection are siblings, or occasionally some categories of in-law where there are
joking relationships. In the street or market husbands and wives display con-
siderable reserve and certainly do not touch one another. This makes the follow-
ing photograph unusual, for although a photograph is different from a public
activity, it is usually intended for some form of display if not to the public at large
then at least for visitors to the house=compound.
Below I give two accounts of that photograph [Figure 7], first as a touching
portrait of a couple whose pose reveals an intimacy rarely seen in African
studio photographs, and second as an image taken as part of an administrative
process.
The subjects are leaning towards each other and their heads touch. This image
shows both intimacy and affection, as well as some reserve on the part of the
woman. The photograph was composed by negotiation between the photogra-
pher and his clients. My archives from different photographers contain several
examples of similarly posed couples.

PRECEDENTS AND OTHER WORK

In search of comparative material I examined the record in the two largest
published collections of African photography, In=sight: African Photographers,
1940 to the Present [Bell, Enwezor, Tilkin, and Zaya 1996] and the Anthology of
 412 D. Zeitlyn
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Figure 7 Jonathan Dombea and Fonika Sitan, Atta, ca. 1985. (Photo: Samuel Finlak).

African and Indian Ocean Photography [Saint Léon et al. 1999]. I looked for
male-female pairs without children (the addition of children makes the image
a family portrait, contentiously quite a different type of photograph from one
of a ‘‘couple’’). The collections contain no comparable studio portraits (apart
from Keita’s work, discussed below).18 It is in the work of Seydou Keita [Magnin
1997] and Cornélius Yao Augustt Azaglo (see below) that I have found the near-
est parallels but even these are somewhat distant from my cases. The photo-
graphs of Keita which suggest the most intimacy are images 101, 185, 187, and
170 from Magnin [1997]. Sadly copyright disputes prevent their inclusion here:
despite protracted correspondence it proved impossible to identity anyone in a
position to give permission for their publication.
Significantly, image 170 is a portrait of the photographer and his wife. In image
185 the intimacy, is heightened by the gaze of the man: ignoring the camera he
concentrates on the woman. Other examples of opposite sex couples (but not
displaying such intimacy) are images 83, 84, 98, 99, 132, 135, 161, 169, and 247.
The significant difference between Keita’s images and the Finlak=Chila images
is the gender asymmetry of Keita’s images: even image 101, which bears the
closest resemblance to the Cameroon examples, is asymmetric: the woman leans
towards the man who has his arm around her (as does Keita with his wife in
image 170).
It must be recognized that for anthropological purposes these anthologies can
be no more than suggestive. They are survey volumes in which the criteria are
 Representation/Self-representation 413

almost exclusively aesthetic. They make no claims to comprehensively catalogu-

ing the types of photograph taken. However, there simply are no other sources
at present. There are comprehensive archives of the work of few photographers
and of these none is accessible for comparative study with the exception of the
work of Cornélius Yao Augustt Azaglo, made accessible though decades of
heroic struggle by Jean-François Werner. The IRD database (http://www.ird.fr/
indjgo/] contains 491 images by Augustt Azaglo of which some ten are of cou-
ples,19 many exhibiting an intimacy which was not for public distribution. In this
case, as well as for Keita, legal disputes prevent their republication here.
Of these 10 images, 3 are especially close to the Cameroonian examples. Image
20763 shows a couple embracing as they stand and the man is looking obliquely
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to the right of the camera, his hand on her shoulder. In Image 21072 the woman is
sitting on the man’s knee. She has spread out her skirts, a stylistic trope visible in
many of Augustt Azaglo’s photographs. This strongly suggests the intention was
to print the image with little cropping, which as we shall see makes it different
from the Cameroonian photographs. Image 21190 is the closest to the Cameroo-
nian examples: the couple look straight into the lens but their heads are not
touching, and the use of the plastic flower again suggests that they intended to
print most of the image taken.
There are other currents at play in the use of photographic images in Africa,
especially where the craft traditions of studio photography meet ‘‘Fine Art.’’
Artists such as the Cameroonian Samuel Fosso have played with tropes from
the studio photographers just as Cindy Sherman played with conventions of
portraiture in the United States. They return us to our initial questions about
the social uses of visual representations which make some (but not all) images
of people portraits.

MARRIAGE CERTIFICATES
The significance of cropping in the printing process was revealed after further
work in the field. Research undertaken to document the images revealed a
more prosaic and administrative explanation for the Cameroonian photographs:
they were taken in order to be attached to the marriage certificates document-
ing a civil marriage [Figures 8–10]. By posing the couple with their heads touch-
ing, both their faces could be fitted into a standard ‘‘passport photograph’’ size.
Standardly, according to the photographers with whom I have worked closely,
the woman is placed on the left, the man on the right and they bend their
heads to touch each other. They also said that in photographs for national
identity cards people could not wear hats or head scarves and that properly
this should be the case for marriage photographs, since they too are for admin-
istrative purposes. The norm in both Christian and Muslim areas is that every-
one covers their head with hats for men and tied cloths for women (usually
matching the fabric of their wrappa, the cloth tied round their waist as a skirt).
Jonathan Dombea and his wife are bare-headed. That this is not accidental can
be seen since Jonathan Dombea’s hat is visible in the bottom right of the
image—it had been taken off for the shot.
 414 D. Zeitlyn
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Figure 8 Jonathan Dombea and Fonika Sitan, Atta, 2003. (Photograph: David Zeitlyn).

The photograph of Jonathan Dombea and his wife Fonika Sitan from Atta vil-
lage (taken around 1985) is all the more intriguing since they never went ahead
with a state marriage after starting the process in the neighboring village of
Sonkolong (at that date there was no civil registrar in Atta). So they do not have
a marriage certificate, although Jonathan Dombea has kept his copies of the
photograph. (Their son had not seen this photo before I showed it to the family
in late 2003.) It should be explained that few people in rural villages have state

Figure 9 The original print reconstructed.

 Representation/Self-representation 415
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Figure 10 Marriage certificates and certificate-photographs at the registrar’s home office, Mayo
Darlé, December 2005. (Photograph: David Zeitlyn).

marriages. In Somié, the village I have known for more than twenty years, I know
of none (the two couples described by many as having been married in the Cath-
olic Church had blessings rather than formal marriages, and have no certificates
at the time of writing. No church marriages have been performed in the Prot-
estant Church in Somié). Jonathan Dombea and his wife Fonika Sitan had been
‘‘married’’ (or strictly blessed, see below) in church and had several children
before they considered getting a state marriage certificate. They have had two
children since.
The state allows official religious marriages only if the couple already has a
civil marriage certificate. In effect the state marriage has become part of the
arrangements for formal Christian and Moslem marriage (traditional marriages
are not affected). Since civil marriages require a couple to state in writing
whether the marriage is to be monogamous or polygamous, some churches
now require a monogamous certificate before permitting a church wedding
but, I am told, this is a new development in response to the frequency with which
further wives accrue to a marriage several years after the ‘‘first’’ wedding. Such is
 416 D. Zeitlyn
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Figure 11 Photographs on display in Mbouda.

Figure 12 Marriage certificate image from the display wall.

 Representation/Self-representation 417
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Figure 13 (A) Photocopy of part of a marriage certificate. (B) Greetings card using marriage
certificate image.
 418 D. Zeitlyn

the difficulty of changing a certificate once it has been issued that I know of at
least one Catholic priest who will marry a couple with a ‘‘polygamous’’ marriage
certificate if the couple swear before the ceremony that they will be monog-
amous. As was alluded to above, a couple can be blessed in church without
the state certificate. This is often referred to by villagers as a church marriage,
but legally it is not.
Such are the difficulties of obtaining a marriage certificate that in the period
between 1970 and 1990 few couples from Atta village got one. Since certificates
can be issued anywhere it is very hard to document this, but Finlak says that
although he has shot some other photographs in this style he has not made as
many as Chila who worked in the nearby town of Mayo Darlé. Mayo Darlé
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has been a subdivision since the early 1980s and hence has had a state registrar
of marriages. Perhaps more important than this is that it has a long established
immigrant population who need to document that they have become married
to prove this in their places of origin. Hence more people have obtained marriage
certificates there than in Atta or Somié. Of the approximately 400 marriage
certificates issued in Mayo Darlé for the period from 1976 to 1998, Chila says
he recognizes 285 as being his work.
In some cases photographs taken for marriage certificates are reused subse-
quently. In the Bamileke town of Mbouda a marriage certificate photograph
had been enlarged, framed and was on display in the living room along with
many other photographs [Figures 11 and 12].
In another case, with people from the village of Somié, the marriage certificate
photograph was used for a Christmas card [Figure 13].

TIME AND THE PORTRAIT

Images such as those we have been examining may be given different meanings
at different points in their history. An image has a social biography as well as the
people portrayed in it. However, the process of taking a photo is all over in an
instant. (Traditionally the print indexes two moments when light-sensitive che-
micals were exposed to light, the first when the photo was taken and the second
when the negative was printed.) Before that there is a process of negotiation and
arrangement as the sitters and photographer agree to take a particular sort of
photo at a particular place and time. After printing the physical object, the print
itself has its own life story, depending on the various uses to which it is put.
By contrast, the traditional painted portrait is very different, especially when it
coexists with photography. Photography on this view frees portraiture from
some of the need to depict or to enable recognition and control. The images in
passports cannot be painted. The collection of the National Portrait Gallery in
London illustrates this: painted portraits changed as photography became estab-
lished in the second half of the 19th century; indeed the National Portrait Gallery
is now one of the main patrons for portraiture in the United Kingdom. The pro-
cess of painted portraiture is significantly different from photography, since the
act of painting takes non-trivial amounts of time, typically involving repeated sit-
tings. The single static image is thus the result of an extended interaction between
 Representation/Self-representation 419

sitter and painter, which Daphne Todd conveys in her multi-faceted portrait of
Marilyn Strathern [Figure 2].

SILHOUETTES
Elsewhere, in the context of life writing, I have used the metaphor of the sil-
houette [Zeitlyn 2008]. This was inspired by Reynolds’ and Capps’ discussion
of ‘‘sacred biographies.’’ They talk [1976: 8] of reconstructing the ‘‘silhouette’’
of a historical life. A silhouette stems from physical optics just as a photo-
graph does: in the 18th century silhouettes were produced by using a lantern
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to cast the shadow of the subject onto a ground glass screen from which it
was drawn, then cut out by the artist. In the early 19th century silhouettes
(or ‘‘physiognotraces’’) were produced mechanically using a modified panto-
graph to trace the silhouette onto a folded sheet of paper ready to be cut into
a silhouette [see extended discussion in Bellion 2003]. Such silhouettes have an
empirical basis, which, unlike photo, does not disguise or dissemble their arte-
factuality and incompleteness. The representation cannot be confused for the
subject ‘‘itself,’’ as Narcissus confused his reflection in the water for a human.
As David Reason has suggested [1991: 168], it has more in common with the
fate of Narcissus’ shy lover, Echo, who can only repeat what is said to her
and thereby evokes our recollection of the original source. Unlike a photo-
graph, a silhouette does not pretend to be a simulacrum so, perhaps conten-
tiously, it has a different relation both to the person portrayed and to its
viewers than that which a photo has. It can serve as a helpful metaphor for
ethnographic analysis: our goal is a silhouette, honest in its incompleteness,
yet striving for faithfulness around the edges where relatively dispassionate
accuracy is possible. This is how I understand ekphrastic social science: for
all the problems with realism and representation the idea of faithfulness
and aptness survive [extended discussion is in Zeitlyn 2009b].

SEVERAL CONCLUSIONS
Let me finish with a portrait of Margaret Mead. I note that strictly this is a photo-
graph of an installation which was part of a project called Portraits of Eight New
York Women 1970 (exhibited May 8, to June 13, 1998) by Eleanor Antin. Leaving
aside the issue of installation versus photograph I want to ask if this is a good
portrait, if it works in ways similar to or different from the field photo of Mead
displayed on the Library of Congress website [Figure 14].
I think Antin’s image can be used to document or illustrate the argument of
images. If it is presented as an installation about Margaret Mead then we look
at it in one way. If we take Antin seriously and look at it as a portrait then we have
to (re)consider our idea of portraiture. The installation resurrects an argument
about portraiture that goes back to heraldry and its idea of achievements. Per-
haps, and this is where the argument starts, it not so much a portrait as a display
 420 D. Zeitlyn
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Figure 14 (A) Eleanor Antin: Margaret Mead, 1971, from ‘‘Portraits of Eight New York Women.’’
(Courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York. Photo: Zindman=Fremont). (B) Margaret Mead
in Samoa. (Courtesy of the Institute for Intercultural Studies and the Library of Congress).

of the ‘‘achievements’’ of Margaret Mead, akin to those of the Black Prince

displayed near his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral [Figure 15].20
It could also be compared with Tracey Emin’s notorious installation, ‘‘Every-
one I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995,’’ Discussing this work, Shearer West char-
acterizes it as being self-referential, the result of self-exploration like other
instances of self-portraiture, ‘‘but,’’ she continues, ‘‘it avoids the emphasis on
the relationship between the portrayal of physical likeness and the revelation
of character’’ [2004: 213]. It is the delicacy and the complexity of that relationship
that an ekphrastic anthropology explores as it produces ethnographic portraits.
What then is the argument of images as demonstrated by the examples we
have considered? First, that portraiture resists its embodiment (it is not simply
an object) and is only possible within social conventions that establish what
kind of thing a portrait is. Second, that intentions within a set of conventions
are necessary but not sufficient to accomplish a portrait. Third, that self-
portraits stand as a calibrating mark, establishing a pole from which we can
extend our comprehension of other human representations. Just as the first
person pronoun is indexical, and identifies the active subject, so my
self-portrait is a way of displaying how I want to be seen. It is the closest
we can get to answering the impossible question ‘‘how do you see yourself?’’
Finally, anthropological representation, whether verbal or visual, is underta-
ken for specific purposes, and it is ekphrastic: it points, evocatively, beyond
 Representation/Self-representation 421
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Figure 15 The ‘‘achievements’’ of Edward the Black Prince. (Courtesy of Dan Schultz, http://
mordac.org/).

itself, outside the text or image. Moreover, it can be de-composed and the basis
for its conclusions explained; it has empirical warrants from the exercise of
fieldwork.

NOTES
1. This is also discussed in another paper [Zeitlyn ms. 1, Antinomies of Representation].
2. See Potter [1996], Gergen and Gergen [2000] and Denzin [2000].
3. The last makes an important distinction between looking and seeing as a way out of
Fabian’s ‘‘visualism’’ [1983: 106].
4. I have included ‘‘social constructionism’’ in psychology but it equally fits here.
5. Strathern [1988: 146] quotes Josephides on economic systems, especially how exchange
implies a disguise of exploitation, a different sort of misrecognition.
6. Lacan’s ‘‘mirror stage’’ is an idea borrowed from Henri Wallon.
7. These ambiguities provided the starting point of Susanna Egan’s exploration of
the self-reflexivity of autobiographical writing, as given in her title ‘‘Mirror Talk’’
[1999].
8. This is further discussed in another paper [ms. 2, Some Cameroonian Photographs].
9. Parmigiano painted a self-portrait in a convex mirror in 1523 [Howarth 1980: 96].
10. Or, to be exact, it illustrates two component parts of the ‘‘dividual’’ which are not
usually visible simultaneously.
11. See Durden [2003] for discussion of Joachim Schmid’s ‘‘Pictures from the street’’
project which exemplifies this in a conceptual art context.
12. The sense in which I am using the term representation excludes footprints, smoke or
other related traces. These may be indexes in Peirce’s sense but not representations.
Bees can communicate information about the location of nectar, but I don’t regard
 422 D. Zeitlyn

their activity as representational (unlike the cases of deceitful apes discussed by Byrne
and Whitten [1988]).
13. John Tagg makes the related point that power mediates the seeing and interpretation
of photographs [1988: 189]. Just by themselves no quantity of photographs of the Loch
Ness Monster would convince (would be taken as evidence for the existence of the
monster). Only after a paradigm shift would these be taken as evidence, and paradigm
shifts, as much of history and philosophy of science (following Kuhn) has shown, are
about the complex, non-deterministic inter-relations of power, practice and evidence.
14. Poole [1997] discusses parallel South American material; Pinney [1997], the develop-
ment of Indian image making. For African photography, see below.
15. As I have argued elsewhere [Zeitlyn 2006], this is also relevant to the indexing and
management of image collections.
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16. This is close to archaeology in Collingwood’s (not Foucault’s) sense. Another powerful
metaphor is Rugg’s use of scarring—in which a print as scar evokes the event
(wounding) which produced it [1997: 238].
17. For the record, the full sequence of official implementation is as follows: 14 Jan 1947,
ID Cards were required in some urban areas but photographs were optional [Arrêté
du Haut Commissaire de France au Cameroun 2521, 3=9=1946, 46=1946, 46=1078 in
Journal Officiel du Cameroun français, pp. 1078–79]. From 24 Sept. 1953 ID cards with
compulsory photographs were required throughout French Cameroon. This was
implemented over the entire country in the period 1954–57 [Order 599 of 24 Sept.
1953, 53=1688, JOCF, p. 1168]. Finally on 29 Sept. 1964 a National ID Card with photo-
graph was required in the Federal republic [Decree No. 64-DF-394 of 29 Sept. 1964,
Official Gazette of the Federal Republic of Cameroon, 1041–42].
18. Malick Sidibe’s work includes photographs of courting couples, but these were taken
outside his studio and he was trying for a different style than his ‘‘normal’’ studio work.
19. Reference numbers and dates (where recorded) are as follows: 20999, 21224, 20746 (01=
01=1958), 21072 (01=01=1958), 20763 (01=01=1959), 21051 (01=03=1961), 21053 (01=03=
1961), 20787 (15=01=1980), 20782 (12=01=1980), 21190 (16=09=1961).
20. This archaic sense of the word achievement captures the uncertainty about what
constitutes a portrait [Jordanova 2000: 138 ff. on the practice of portraiture]. Other
examples include Henry Moore’s drawing of Dorothy Hodgkin’s hands [Jordanova
2000: illus. 93, p. 156] and the much earlier ‘‘Goltzius’s burin Hand’’ [Hendrick
Goltzius 1588] which Melion and Küchler argue should be taken as a self-portrait
[1991: 8–9].

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Ms. 2 Some Cameroonian Photographs.

FILMOGRAPHY
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Productions.