Awards within Programme Cultural Dynamics
16 December 2009
On 5 November 2009 the applications within the second round of the research programme Cultural Dynamics were granted. A total number of six research projects, of which one is related to the research field of WOTRO, have been awarded a subsidy of € 450,000 each. The focus of this research programme is on the formation of cultural heritage as a dynamic, societal process which is crucial for (re)defining identities of individuals, groups and nations. A thorough understanding of this complex process of cultural heritage formation in the Western and non-Western world contributes to solving problems related to social cohesion.
Within the Cultural Dynamics programme, the project related to WOTRO research is:
Prof. dr. R.J. Ross (UL) - Photographic Traditions in Black Popular Modernities: towards a socio-historical analysis of the visual economy in and beyond South Africa
An important aim of this project of researchers Ross and Spyer is to contribute to the process of archive formation ongoing in Post-Apartheid South Africa through the inclusion of photographs that have been either unacknowledged or excised from the national canon. The researchers hope to achieve this through the organization of historical workshops and traveling exhibitions centered upon vernacular photographic material.
Abstract:
Since the middle of the twentieth century, photographs have become an integral part of the material culture and visual economy of black South Africa. In this project, the researchers will investigate how black South Africans have appropriated the technology of photography, and how they made decisions as to the images they wished to create and to preserve. As a result the researchers argue against a view which sees photography as merely a tool of oppression. Rather, in this project, the emphasis is on the way in which photography has become part of, and evidence for, the developing popular culture of apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, in which both the specific modernities and the "traditions", including the ethnicities of the country are expressed. Simultaneously the researchers will investigate how vernacular photography is moving from being purely private possessions to becoming part of the common heritage and the 'Archive' of post-apartheid South Africa.
The project includes:
- one PhD project focused on vernacular township photography in its relation to rising consumption and urbanization;
- one Phd project on the role of Zulu studio portraiture in the construction of a Zulu ethnic identity.
The other awarded research projects can be found on the programme website (Dutch only - the website will be available in English in February)
