Trigger

Addis Ababa, Wednesday, 7 August 2019

Dear Dr. Julien,

Sixty-four years after you briefly visited this town on your way to South Western Ethiopia, I am in Addis Ababa. Yesterday, I visited Itegue Taitu Hotel, where you spent your first nights in the country. I brought a print of the Kodachrome slide you made of the accommodation. The host I met was surprised to see how much has changed since 1955. He showed me where you once stood, looking down towards the building behind the restaurant and the tennis court on its right. A banner and a truck now blocked the view. The tennis court, the host informed me, was long gone. Meanwhile, time seemed to have stood still in the restaurant itself. While enjoying my lunch, it was easy to imagine you coming down the stairs at any moment.

While I type this letter on my computer, a documentary titled The Great Hack^{Noujaim J. and Amer, K., dirs., The Great Hack. 2019.} is playing on the television set of my host, artist Michael Tsegaye. This film addresses the theft of personal data shared on the internet, a phenomenon you may remember emerging in the late 1990s. The stolen data was used to influence national elections without the ‘provider’ being aware of it. You, too, collected data from individuals you encountered on your journeys without their informed consent. This, therefore, seems to be an appropriate moment to share some thoughts with you about the relationship between our respective ambitions and the effects our actions had and could have. In other words, this letter is about impact.

Last Monday, I did a presentation for a group of Ethiopian photographers and designers. After speaking about my way of working,^{Stultiens, Andrea. Pages 13-30 of my dissertation (https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/67951)} I showed them the photographs and films you produced here. I added translated information from your notebook and from newspaper clippings reporting on a public lecture titled ‘Shankala’. Michael told me that Shankala, which is Amharic for ‘Black’,^{Shinn, D.H. and Ofcansky, T.P..,Ethiopian Historical Dictionary. 363. Washington, Scarecrow Press.} is now considered to be a derogatory term because it was used to refer to people with dark skin as well as to slaves. I decided to avoid using the word. I did, however, use ‘Negroe’ and ‘Pygmy’ when quoting you, even though I’m well aware these words are considered to be offensive, too. Their past and present-day uses by non-Black people like you and me emphasise the differences between people with different positions of power. They generate a distance I consider problematic. One of the members of the audience was indeed offended by my using the words, while others argued that the messenger should not be shot.

It was not the first time I encountered this kind of response to the work I, as a White European, do on the African continent or to the historical materials I bring to the table. I take this to be a reply to the privileged positions that both of us have and use to ‘take’ whatever it is we need before leaving again. This observation could result in a dismissal of ‘your’ photographs because it reduces their meaning to your position as a maker. Such a judgment, however, also dismisses the possible agency and relevance of the visibility of the people, places and objects you photographed. It eliminates the potential impact of the accessibility of the photographs forthem as it does the possibility for people in ‘the West’ to learn from them. In order for this potential to unfold, I take it as my responsibility to explain the purpose of my visit to whomever I encounter and work with. This may lead to uncomfortable situations, as was the case with the person I offended, despite my attempts to carefully position my words. It cannot, however, result in my being less honest about my intentions. Which reminds me of a question. In your writing, you repeatedly mention how the ‘natives’ you met were rude, primitive or dishonest. Did it ever occur to you that they might have rightfully thought the same of you?

With regards to your first major scientific expedition in 1932, I have a more particular but related concern. In July 2014, I was in Liberia for the third time. During earlier visits, I followed the same route you travelled eighty-two years earlier. I visited, as I mentioned in the previous letter, descendants of ‘King’ Kwei Dokie and prepared an exhibition of your photographs in the National Museum in Monrovia that was then about to open. Ebola, at the time a deadly and highly contagious virus, had been raging through the region for a couple of months. The crisis related to it reached a new height in the week before the planned exhibition opening. I was invited to speak about the show during the weekly governmental press conference of which Ebola was, of course, the major topic. After providing journalists with numerous facts about the virus, the minister of health addressed the people of Liberia directly through the microphones and cameras in the room: ‘You should not be afraid of the health workers, because they too get sick.’ I doubted what my ears had heard. As if aware of my incredulity, the minister repeated the remark several times. Then I remembered reading an anecdote in which the population of Gbarnga fled town because of the way in which the district commissioner had communicated the purpose of your visit. It occurred to me that the minister’s remark could’ve been part of a damage control strategy related to the actions of people like you, who through their practice generated a distance between ‘the sick’ and those coming from elsewhere to treat (and research) them. Is it possible that you contributed to the ‘fear-related behaviour’ the minister responded to?^{A lot has been written, particularly in mainstream news media, about this phenomenon; however, a historical perspective is rarely taken. See Shultz et al. ‘The Role of Fear-Related Behaviours in the 2013-2016 West Africa Ebola Virus Disease Outbreak’. Current Psychiatry Reports, November 2016.} Would you do things differently now?

And also, going back to a more general concern about impact, would it make sense for you to be decentred from the meaning and value of the photographs you produced? This question and the others asked earlier will stay with me as I work my way towards the next letter.

With best regards,

Andrea

P.S. I almost forgot. Yesterday, I came across the first proof of your presence on the African continent from a perspective other than your own. Johan Helland, an emeritus anthropologist specialising in issues concerning the Horn of Africa, replied to the message I sent him. He was the eight-year-old son of the Norwegian family with whom you spent a night in Southern Ethiopia.^{From Paul Julien’s Ethiopia notes, private collection.} He recognised all the adults in a group portrait I attached to my words. You took the picture at the mission in Neghelle. Johan does not remember you himself but recalls his mother mentioning an anthropologist who was on his way to research ‘pygmies’ and visit Lake Stephanie.

*****

The encounters generated by my engagement with Julien’s legacy continuously make me aware of certain privileges I ‘enjoy’ as a White woman, such as freedom of movement and access to resources. They also bring up the relativity of my rather specific expertise as an artist and researcher educated in the Netherlands. Little can be taken for granted when it comes to, for instance, the benefits of ‘Western’ healthcare or the ethnic categorisation of people. Spending time with Julien’s photographs where they were produced decades ago leads, time and again, to experiences that make it possible to connect particular narratives to photographs that were, so far, framed from an ideologically coloured outsider’s perspective. These experiences and narratives have the potential to expand existing ideas of ‘African’ pasts and presents for audiences both on the African continent and elsewhere. For this to be possible, they have to be presented in ways that are open-ended and inclusive of the multiple perspectives related to Julien’s legacy.