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    Photography against the grain: rethinking the colonial archive in Kenyan museums

    Coombes, Annie E. (2016) Photography against the grain: rethinking the colonial archive in Kenyan museums. World Art Journal 6 (1), pp. 1-23. ISSN 2150-0894.

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    Abstract

    This article revisits the representation of the state of emergency in Kenya, focusing on two instances where the colonial photographic archive has been worked against the grain: the National Museum of Kenya (Nairobi) and the Lari Memorial Peace Museum. I argue that these two examples effectively destabilize the colonial archive's conventionally reiterated truths in ways that afford the possibility for the viewer to think ‘otherwise'. Located in distinctive museal spaces (national and community-based) from which their operations draw further potency, both institutions conversely offer ways to reimagine the museum itself as archive.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Kenyan museums, photographic archives, colonial photographs, Miriam Syowia Kyambi, colonial and postcolonial monuments, monuments, museums, Kenya, Mau Mau, Loyalist forces in Kenya, Lari massacres, Lari Memorial Peace Museum, British colonial propaganda
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies
    Depositing User: Annie Coombes
    Date Deposited: 11 Apr 2016 11:03
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:22
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/14707

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