Ibrahim Abdullah
Dept. of History and African Studies
Fourah Bay College
E-mail: ibdullah@gmail.com
Abstract
Visual history or the use of photography in reconstructing/deconstructing the African past is a relatively new area in the burgeoning field of African historiography. Recent studies in Southern Africa---where visual history is being taught at the undergraduate level--- have drawn attention to the racist sub-text in early colonial photography; its excessive ideological baggage; and the devastating cultural impact of the ‘colonizing camera'. The limitations of the ‘colonizing camera' not only reveal the use and abuse of photography as a source for historical reconstruction but also its efficacy as a mode of representation. This paper examines images of violence and terror in Sierra Leone's civil war. Its primary focus is on images of violence on the human body--- the mass amputation of innocent civilians by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)--- and the destruction of the city of Freetown during the January 1999 invasion. What do these images tell us about war in contemporary Africa/ about contemporary insurgent movements? How do we read/interpret the mass amputation of innocent civilians in a senseless civil war? Can these images be construed as ‘facts' to be used in reconstructing the Sierra Leone Civil War? My argument is that visual images (photographs) have limitations that are strikingly similar to the spoken (oral tradition) and written word (text); that deconstructing visual images constitutes an integral aspect of the historian's craft; that to privilege images because they appear to be ‘real' is not to write history but to distort it.