Telephone number:	+31 (0)71 527 2322
E-Mail:	s.feyder@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Faculty / Department:	Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen, Institute for History, Talen en culturen van Afrika
Office Address:	Johan Huizingagebouw Doelensteeg 16 2311 VL Leiden Room number 0.19a

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The project’s starting point is a unique collection of negatives from the late Robert Ngilime, dating from the 1950s. Working for a tobacco company in the Eastern Rand under apartheid South Africa, Ronald was also in his free time the autodidact community photographer. At his death in 1960, he left a legacy of unrecognised cultural value, consisting of over six thousand negatives, currently held by his grandson.

The aims of this research are so far two-folded. First, I will approach this visual collection as an untapped source of information for social history. Such private snapshots are material traces of subaltern Black subjects who, through their engagement with the camera, were formulating elements of an evolving Black urban culture. For example, the important role objects play in these portraits suggests an evolution in people’s relation to things, coinciding with the boom in mass consumption in the 1940s and 50s. 

The second aim consists in transforming this collection into an archive without removing it from the township. The negatives need to be digitalised and preserved in long-term conservation conditions. Yet the biggest challenge will be to establish a connection between the Ngilime collection and the present day local community. Can the collection counteract the geographical and material displacement of memory inherited from the forced removals of the 1970s?