Trailblazing African women who shaped photography history

Although the history of photography in Africa dates back to around 1863, female image makers were largely excluded from the mainstream of photography. Over the past decade, photography has had a significant impact on expanding Western perceptions of Africa and its diaspora. At the same time, the female gaze in photography continues to challenge and change ideas about identity and representation.

5 Pioneering female photographers in African history

1. Felicia Abban (Ghana)

Felicia Ewuraesi Abban, Ghana’s first professional female photographer, was born in 1935. She followed in the footsteps of her father, J.E. Ansah, becoming his photographer’s apprentice at the age of fourteen. In 1953, Abban founded Mrs. Felicia Abban’s Day and Night Quality art studio in Jamestown, Accra. James Barnor’s studio, “Ever Young,” and J.K. Bruce-Vanderpuije studio, “Deo Gratias,” were also nearby. In the 1960s, she worked as a photographer for Ghana’s first President, Kwame Nkrumah.

Abban also worked for Guinea Press Limited, now known as Ghana Times, which was the publishing house of the People’s Party led by Nkrumah. Her career spanned sixty years, and she retired in 2013 due to arthritis. Abban is well known for her studio photography, fashion style, and journalistic work. She was the lead post-production artist, carefully applying color and highlights. Although her work was presented internationally at the Ghana Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, her contributions to science have yet to be properly documented.

2. Ruth Motau

Ruth Seopedi Motau (born 1968) was the first black female photographer employed by a newspaper in South Africa after the end of apartheid (circa 1994). Her photographs, influenced by photojournalism and the marginalization of black communities, focus on social documentation. Visit. A F R I N I K . C O M , For the full article. Motau was born in Soweto and became interested in photography in 1990 while studying at the Johannesburg Market Photo Workshop.

After completing the three-year course, Motau worked as an intern at the Mail & Guardian newspaper, and then as a photographer and photo editor. She has worked as a photo editor for various publications, including The Sowetan and City Press. Among her photographic works are “Shebins”, “Sonnyboy Story”, and “Women and Municipal Services”. Motau’s award-winning work has been shown both nationally and internationally, and institutions have recognized its impact on South African documentary photography.

3. Vera Elkan

Vera Elkan was a South African photographer known for her photographs of international brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Having mixed South African and German ancestry, Elkan studied photography in Berlin in the 1930s and worked as a photographer in Germany and South Africa. While in London, she received funding from the British campaign in support of the International Brigades to travel to Spain to photograph the brigades’ actions.

In December 1936, she traveled by ambulance to Albacete, where she photographed German, French, and British recruits at a training facility. Other photos show foreign journalists, a hospital in Valencia, blood transfusions, and those injured in an air raid in Madrid. Her photographs also featured Mikhail Koltsov from Pravda, Claude Cockburn from the Daily Worker, and surgeon Norman Bethune. Later, Elkan worked as a portrait photographer in London, but her studio was destroyed during the war, as were most of her works. After the war, she focused on family life.

4. Mme Agbokou, Mlle N’kegbe, Jacqueline Mathey, and Chantal Lawson (Togo)

Even though there are practically no photo archives, references to Togolese women image makers appear as early as the 1970s. Madame Agboku, a freelance journalist, and Mademoiselle N’kegbe, who worked for the Togolese Information Service, published their work in Amina magazine in 1974. N’kegbe began her career as a professional photographer in 1964, after completing her studies in Lagos. Mademoiselle Jacqueline Mathey was another Togolese woman who worked for the Togolese State television. Chantal Lawson, one of the first Togolese female studio photographers, was captured above in her studio in 1968 in a rare photograph acquired by Evelyne Bernheim

5. Neo Ntsoma

Neo Ntsoma is a South African photographer renowned for her work in reporting, portraiture, music, and popular culture photography. She was born in Vryburg and grew up in rural Mafikeng, North West Province, where her interest in cinema was sparked at an early age. She grew up in the apartheid era and saw negative images of black South Africans and the non-participation of black women in the white-male-dominated media industry, and this gave her the strength to want to change something. Still, it was not easy to realize this dream due to the racial restrictions of that time.

Ntsoma attended St. Mary’s High School, where she was introduced to music, dance, and theater, and it was then that she realized that her professional path was different from that of her friends. Despite the many disappointments in her life, she persevered to become a successful photographer. Ntsoma is known for her photographs, which stand out for the unusual angles from which they are shot, and for the way she plays with what is in focus in the pictures and what is not. Besides being an award-winning photographer, she has become an energetic coach for aspiring photojournalists.