Herbert M. Cole

Photography in Africa

The compelling nature of the photograph-as work of art, as documentary record, and in its impact on life itself-makes this imagery and its attendant technology critical to the study and understanding of the arts in Africa. This journal itself has celebrated the vital role of photography, at least implicitly, by publishing thousands of black-andwhite and color pictures, and a few specific photographic studies. Americans, Europeans, and, increasingly, the peoples of Africa see so many photographs on a daily basis that it is often forgotten that this type of image making is barely more than a hundred years old. Indeed the advent of photography as a viable portable medium and the serious study of African culture are nearly parallel developments. For many of us today, cameras are mandatory accessory organs to our eyes and memories. And yet for many students of African art and life, both cameras and photographic images themselves have all too often been taken

Art Studies in Ghana

are alive and well. A great deal of traditional art is being used continuously in shrines, stool rooms, festivals and other contexts; sculptors still receive commissions, textile industries thrive, while still other art and craft specialists make objects for the tourist trade and for export. Although The Arts of Ghana catalogue and exhibition (Doran H. Ross and Herbert Cole, 1977; organized by the UCLA Museum of Cultural History) are far from being a last word on the forms, histories and complexities of Ghanaian arts, they have perhaps highlighted the significant work of many scholars over the years, work that continues unabated today and looks to the future with optimism. This special issue of African Arts indeed points up the numbers of scholars in many fields who are refining historical analyses, identifying styles, elucidating symbolic systems, and otherwise pushing out the frontiers of aesthetic knowledge in Ghana.