The Paro Manene Project: Exhibiting and Researching Photographic Histories in Western Kenya

The International Handbooks of Museum Studies: Museum Transformations, First Edition. Edited by Annie E. Coombes and Ruth B. Phillips. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Paro Manene ProjecTexhibiting and researching Photographic histories in Western Kenya

Christopher Morton and Gilbert oteyo

This chapter is an extended reflection on the museological issues surrounding a series of photographic exhibitions titled Paro Manene (a Luo phrase that roughly translates as “reflecting on the past”), organized and curated by the authors in Nyanza Province (western Kenya) in February 2007.1 This traveling exhibition con-sisted of a number of large printed panels that presented photographs and text on Luo culture in the early twentieth century, based on material from the Pitt Rivers Museum’s photograph collections (see Morton and Oteyo 2009). The chapter dis-cusses a number of critical issues that emerged from the project. At the outset, we posed ourselves a number of questions centered on the authority to curate a com-munity exhibition from a Western anthropological archive, as well as the fact that a traveling exhibition is a complex logistical mission that would undoubtedly have unexpected outcomes and sets of local perceptions. These logistical issues were to have implications for the way both ethical and intellectual questions raised by the project were played out and resolved. This chapter seeks to explore the complex interrelationship between both practical and interpretive issues that the Paro Manene project raised. These questions were addressed initially during a preparatory visit to Nyanza by Oteyo to discuss the proposed series of exhibitions with the Luo Council of Elders. This was intended as more than just seeking their permission; it was rather to seek their views on what such an exhibition had to contribute to local perceptions of Luo history and culture, especially during the colonial period.

The project also raised logistical and methodological issues relating to the man-agement of ongoing relationships (and expectations) between Western museums and local communities and organizations. One of the central theoretical questions

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that we consider in this chapter is how projects such as this add to our understand-ing of, or indeed criticize and modify, the concept of “visual repatriation” which has frequently been used in museum literature (e.g., Fienup-Riordan 1996, 23; Dudding 2005) without receiving the critical attention it demands. One of our particular concerns at the time we conceived of the project was what the contem-porary political implications might be of exhibiting colonial era anthropological imagery relating to a single ethnic group, especially given the sometimes volatile admixture of history, ethnicity, and politics in Kenya – and, on top of this, what the local political implications might be of showing such historical imagery without the opportunity to contextualize the archive itself, the very processes and institu-tional histories that led to its formation, preservation, and reconnection with the community. The archive felt raw, exposed to multiple readings and perceptions, and without the usual careful (and comfortable) wrapping of historical context in which it was normally consumed by Western academia. But, although we felt these anxieties at the outset, few if any of them emerged in the same form locally.

Less than a year after the Paro Manene exhibitions took place, the disputed presi-dential elections of December 27, 2007 saw the country erupt into violence, along with the subsequent mass internal displacement of people. Nyanza was one of the flashpoints of the violence, as it was the home region of opposition leader Raila Odinga. Although the violence was frequently glossed as “interethnic” or “tribal” in the Western media, it is now clear that it was largely politically motivated, involving new factors such as religion, age, and economic deprivation (Cheesman 2008). Nonetheless, a project such as this, which raised the profile, to a certain extent, of Luo historical identity in the Kenyan national context, did take place at a time when issues of ethnic identity and politics were very much part of local political discourse, especially in relation to the economic development of Nyanza Province. Areas such as Nyanza are largely perceived to have been economically neglected by the postindependence Kenyan state as a result of both corruption and the widespread understanding that Kenyan presidents prioritized the development of their own communities; Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki oversaw large-scale development projects in Kalenjin and Kikuyu areas respectively. Some of the recorded responses to the exhibition seemed to suggest that politics, economic development, and heritage projects were closely linked in many people’s minds, especially in the calls for local authorities to establish a Luo cultural center as a means of augmenting a sense of Luo historical identity. While acknowledging this important set of historical and political contexts surrounding the exhibitions, this chapter will focus on the museological processes involved, as well as community responses and outcomes.

It was made clear by many Luo visitors to the exhibitions that depositing digital and printed copies of the exhibition with Kisumu Museum – one of our original intentions – did not in itself constitute an effective local legacy for the project, partly because most people’s connections to Kisumu Museum were weak, and partly because they did not perceive it to be a particularly accessible Luo

The Paro Manene Photographic Project in Kenya 313

institution, as an outpost of Kenyan National Museums. Although Kisumu is the capital of Nyanza Province and an important regional hub, Oteyo’s previous discussions at a more local level stressed the need to work more directly at district level, such as with Bondo and Siaya town councils, which were the locations most featured in the photographs. Although traveling the exhibition to small village ven-ues was a highly successful format, and is undoubtedly a key feature of engaging local communities with museum and archive collections, it quickly became appar-ent that strategic consideration was also needed in terms of managing local demand for ongoing access to the material, and for developing relationships beyond institutions.

The original exhibition project was in part inspired by Corinne Kratz’s (2002) book The Ones That Are Wanted, which examined the political, representational, and ethical issues involved in exhibiting “ethnographic” photography in Kenya and in America. Kratz discusses the issues surrounding an exhibition of her own field photographs of the Okiek people of west central Kenya from the 1980s (which she presents in the book) but is more especially concerned with how and what an exhi-bition communicates to its various audiences: the work of captions, context, and the politics of representation. We were both struck by the unfortunate story in this work of how the Okiek, who were the subject of Kratz’s field photographs, never managed to make it to Nairobi themselves to see Kratz’s exhibition (Kratz 2002, 103). We resolved that Paro Manene would move between several village venues in Luo country, to ensure that the two least mobile groups of Luo people – the elderly and schoolchildren – would have the most opportunity to see the exhibition. Kratz’s call for “further critical reflection on exhibitions, the communication and politics of representation fundamental to them, and how understandings of iden-tity and difference might be formed and changed through these processes” (2002, 4) is something we hope to address in this chapter. The other inspiration was the work of Laura Peers at the Pitt Rivers Museum and Alison Brown at the University of Aberdeen whose work with First Nations communities in Canada has not only pioneered the practice of complex museum collaborations with indigenous com-munities, but also successfully documented its processes so as to contribute to wider disciplinary debates (Brown et al. 2006; Peers and Brown 2009).

A further motivation came as a result of Oteyo’s long involvement with archae-ological research in the Nyanza region, mostly with the British Institute in Eastern Africa, which had led him to re-evaluate established histories of the Luo people (e.g., Ogot 1967), as well as social studies of Luo ideological or ethical systems (Ocholla-Ayayo 1976) from a material culture perspective. For Oteyo, the absence of materiality and visuality from such studies had meant that important regional historical connections had been missed. Ogot’s reliance, for instance, on oral histo-ries and genealogies, had meant that archaeological evidence relating to Luo migration had been neglected. Likewise, received histories relating to Luo responses to colonialism, Oteyo felt, had neglected the visual evidence of photog-raphy which suggested a more nuanced history of cultural change in the period.


As a Luo who has a home in Bondo district, Oteyo had long believed that the organization of a series of local exhibitions in Nyanza would be of great interest locally and lead to significant local debate. For Oteyo, examining changes in mate-rial culture production and consumption through museum collections, especially historical photographs, is an alternative approach to writing the history of an African people, one that is still mostly overlooked by African scholars themselves. This is partly because such material was collected by Westerners and deposited in European museums many years ago, and so, unsurprisingly, only a few African students seek to engage with what are perceived as remote colonial institutions.

The context for this series of exhibitions can be set at the productive center point of two research directions: that of an African researcher seeking to reinvig-orate the study of his own community through the opening up of a museum collection to local view and debate, and that of a British curator seeking to expand the range of possibilities and contemporary meanings of a collection of photographs in his care. Beyond this, there was also a joint sense that such photographs were important historical documents for both African and anthropological history more widely, not just for Luo society and culture. There were also unknown and unseen histories that emerged only later, particularly environmental and agricultural his-tories that local people saw and responded to in the images, which had not been included in our own vision of the material.

Luo photographs

The Luo are the third largest ethnic group in Kenya, and live mainly in Nyanza (formerly Kavirondo) region close to Lake Victoria (Victoria Nyanza). They are linguistically and culturally related to other Nilotic language groups of Sudan and Uganda. An understanding of Luo culture is an important adjunct to the Pitt Rivers Museum’s ongoing research into the ethnography and cultural history of South Sudan (http://southernsudan.prm.ox.ac.uk), since it is from this region that historians have traced their migration into Kenya (Crazzolara 1950; Ogot 1967).2 Although Bantu groups were also present in Nyanza at an early date, little early anthropological research seems to have been done on these peoples. The Pitt Rivers Museum holds approximately 130 artifacts and 450 historical photographs relating to the Luo. The two most significant sets of photographs, by colonial administrator Charles W. Hobley (1867–1947) and anthropologist Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard (1902–1973), are significant for two reasons: the historical content of their visual record, as well as the relationship to their published writings on the Luo (Hobley 1903; Evans-Pritchard [1949] 1965, 1950). Hobley was a notable administrator-ethnographer of the early twentieth century who made a number of contributions to academic journals. The inclusion of photographs by Evans-Pritchard, one of the most important British anthropologists of the twentieth cen-tury, is of much wider significance, bringing the images into the broader intellectual


context of Evans-Pritchard’s work on Nilotic political and social organization. Both Hobley and Evans-Pritchard were interested in Luo political organization and, for this reason, photographed a number of chiefs and other leading individu-als, as well as the material culture of authority, such as the tong, or heriditary spears, of clan leaders. This interest shaped their photograph collections and makes them particularly significant for Luo historians as well as for contemporary audiences seeking images of Luo leaders of the colonial period. Hobley’s photo-graphs, some of which he published in several ethnographic journal articles, seem to date mostly from 1902 onward, in the period after he had established the admin-istrative headquarters at Kisumu, it having been sited earlier at Mumias from 1895. Hobley, who served in the colonial administration in Kenya from 1894 until his retirement in 1921, published a number of ethnographic journal articles, including one shortly after his posting to Kisumu (Hobley 1903). Hobley describes his collec-tion of ethnographic information vividly, stating that most of it was gleaned by two local hut tax collectors, or else from chiefs and others he himself interviewed despite “their usual reticence to discuss such matters with a European” (1903, 325). Given that he was the first administrator of the new Kisumu Province of the East African Protectorate, Hobley’s ethnographic motivations could be interpreted as part of an established colonial administrative methodology of documenting local custom as a means to exercise control (see, for instance, Seligman and Seligman 1932). Hobley himself communicates his own motives as very much part of the salvage paradigm of recording disappearing cultures: “I fear that as civilization develops, many of the strange customs and legends may become lost; in fact, there are already signs that the younger generation are losing interest in the old order of things” (1903, 326).

Besides his portraits of local leaders and elders, what is most striking about Evans-Pritchard’s record of his relatively short six-week visit to Nyanza in 1936 is his readiness to photograph Luo people as he found them, mostly in Western dress. The fact that in his photographs he shows little anxiety about the evident acculturation of the Luo is notable, as is the lack of any scientific reference racial portraiture. In some ways, it could be argued that his photographic record pro-vides a counterpoint to his written account of the visit, “Luo Tribes and Clans” (Evans-Pritchard [1949] 1965), in that the paper pays almost no attention to colo-nial influences on Luo social life or political organization. The only real mention is his statement that interlineage enmity over land “has certainly been accentu-ated by European rule and restrictions” ([1949] 1965, 225). Other than that, a picture is built up in the paper of social and political continuity, building toward the conclusion that “the Luo have the same type of structure as the Nuer” ([1949] 1965, 227), whom he visited for the final time immediately afterward. Evans-Pritchard’s stated intention in his six-week visit to Nyanza (between July and September 1936) was to gain some structural understanding of Luo political organization for a “comparative study of Nilotic lineages as a contribution toward that study of lineage systems on a broader African and worldwide basis”


([1949] 1965, 226). The photographs do record some aspects of “traditional” culture encountered during the survey tour, but most are firmly in the category of a personal record or, rather, a visual notebook or diary. In this sense, it is con-sistent with his other photographic work from 1936 among the Nuer, which also lacks any attempt at a systematic visual record (Morton 2009). For instance, in the photographs he takes of the tong (spear) and grave pot of Alego, he does not seek to exclude his guide, Archdeacon Owen, and the custodian of the site, Jacob Odawo, from the images. Owen does not just hold the items for the camera; he actually poses for a portrait, with the sacred tong Alego in his hands (Figure 14.1). These photographs are complex documents, mixing ethnographic and personal registers; at the same time they are overlaid with paternalistic colonial assump-tions about the custodianship of indigenous culture and heritage through the manner in which the subjects address the camera and present the material cul-ture to it.

Evans-Pritchard’s Luo photographs are a fascinating insight into the role of Walter E. Owen (1879–1945), a significant figure in the colonial history of the region, who at that time was archdeacon of Kavirondo. As Evans-Pritchard notes, his survey was made possible by the local knowledge and networks already

FIGURE 14.1 Jacob Odawo and Archdeacon W. E. Owen, who is holding the tong (spear) of Alego, 1936.Photo: E. E. Evans-Pritchard. Courtesy Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (PRM 1998.349.269.1).


established by Owen, and the cooperation of local Luo people came about “largely out of regard for the Archdeacon and Mrs Owen” ([1949] 1965, 206). Thus, the photographs taken by Evans-Pritchard on his 1936 trip need to be understood not simply as an anthropologist’s visual record, but as the record of how local people responded to a local tour by an influential and respected church leader with a European anthropologist in tow. Owen was a controversial figure in the colony, and historians have keenly debated his role in the colonial system. Although he was an obvious irritant to the colonial administration, arguing vocif-erously against many policies (Spencer 1982) and acting as president of the Kavirondo Taxpayers Welfare Association, some historians have come to see his attitudes as “firmly in the mainstream of Church Missionary Society ideology, and C.M.S. ideology was a vital component of the process of extending and maintaining imperial power” (Murray 1982, 654). Yet there was little doubting Owen’s influence and reputation locally. “Judging from oral testimony,” writes Murray, “a more wholehearted admiration – verging on adulation – was extended to the archdeacon by his African protégés and co-workers” (1982, 655). This atti-tude toward Owen is attested to in Evans-Pritchard’s photographs, especially in terms of the access granted to sacred sites and objects, but also in the more infor-mal and domestic settings of other photographs. Owen’s Luo nickname was “Origre” – someone who pokes their nose into everything (Murray 1982, 655) – possibly earned as a result of his extensive archaeological and paleaontological investigations in the region, which began around 1930 and led to a number of contributions to academic journals (Owen 1933, 1938, 1939). In fact, shortly before Evans-Pritchard’s visit, Owen had been showing local visitors, including the archaeologist Louis Leakey, around an archaeological site at the Kisumu ten-nis club (Owen 1938, 205).3

The combination of an interest in cultural matters, as well as extensive contacts in the region, made Owen an obvious choice for Evans-Pritchard when seeking a local guide, someone “who knew the Luo better than anyone has known them” (Evans-Pritchard [1949] 1965, 205). Evans-Pritchard’s attitude toward missions was complex. “People in the Sudan often say that I am against Christian missions,” he once wrote to an American missionary:

It is largely true that I am against missions, but not against Christian missions, and by that I mean missions which regard it as a privilege to work among Africans and real-ize that Christianity is a spirit which can permeate any culture and not a body of ready-made and repressive rules of conduct which a native must accept in exchange for a higher social status.4

Owen was an intelligent and eloquent critic of the Kenyan administration, with deep interests in African society and culture, and we can only assume that Evans-Pritchard regarded him favorably.


“Looking past”: Interpretive frameworks and local expectations

The Paro Manene exhibitions brought to the fore many local cultural and social issues that were hotly debated by visitors. One crucial debate centered on the cul-tural effects of colonial administration and Western education on the Luo people. To some extent this debate was opened up by Oteyo in the section of the exhibition entitled “Odiero Odonjo (The Luo Encounter with Europeans),”5 which discussed the mapping of colonial power structures onto a pre-existing Luo political organi-zation, and presented a series of photographs by Evans-Pritchard taken in 1936 of Luo people who were employed by the colonial administration, such as the local “police” (askari kanga or ogulmama), noting that:

Within the first few decades of the 20th century administration in Luoland began to change. Local chiefs appointed by the colonial administration (often with approval of the clans) began to replace the traditional chief or ruoth. The new colonial chiefs (still referred to as ruoth) had to wear colonial uniforms similar to white colonial officers, such as District Commissioners. For a time the chiefs retained their local “police” (ogulmama) who were usually not in uniform, but soon even these were trained and given official uniforms … The newly appointed and installed colonial African chiefs not only had to be in full uniform and helmet but had also to embrace education and send their children and those of their Location to school.

Oteyo goes on to remind the viewer that “The colonial government sought to submit the Luo population to colonial control and administration. There is a continued debate as to whether the Luo resisted colonization or more or less acquiesced to it.” Some visitors who debated the role of “Western civilization” on the Luo were openly critical of its influence. Before beginning the project, Oteyo expected Luo responses to be largely positive regarding, for example, the introduction of new forms of dress, but in fact many perceived this to be the source of social conflict. One visitor noted for instance: “I am not happy with the coming of the colonial administration. I believe we the Luo were well off with our old ways of dressing, and even rape was not there despite [us] being naked. After the coming of colonial administration and inventing the modern way of dressing there are cases of rape that came as a result.”6

The Luo phrase for cultural change as a result of colonial contact is mano jananga, and Oteyo chose to tackle the subject directly in the exhibition through a text panel and the selection of a number of photographs by Evans-Pritchard that exemplified local cultural change. His exhibition text in this section stated:

Whether there was a deliberate attempt by the colonial administration to “Westernize” the Luo or whether the Luo readily accepted aspects of European culture is still very much debated. But as is shown in Evans-Pritchard’s photographs


of 1936, one can argue that the Luo were very much culturally changed, if not “Westernized” (jananga) in their way of life as compared to the earlier photos by Hobley … With new biblical names and Christian education, many Luo began to feel that their identities had changed. People increasingly dressed in European clothes as was encouraged by the missions, and traditional personal body adornment and cul-tural practices were increasingly shunned as less civilized than European culture.

The curatorial structure of the exhibition directly engaged with the colonial histories in which the photographs were implicated, but only to the extent that the images illustrated certain themes and pre-existing historical debates current in Kenya. In particular, photographs were selected to illustrate some well-known colonial roles and situations that were either within living memory for some older visitors, or else keenly debated by younger generations. Oteyo alludes in his exhibi-tion text to an ongoing debate on the extent to which the Luo resisted or readily adopted cultural change as a result of contact with Europeans. This debate has a wider context within Kenya, since ethnic groups have occasionally vied for status in the postcolonial state on the basis of how “Westernized,” educated, or accultur-ated they were. A classic study of the tensions that can arise in the modern Kenyan state between “traditional” and modern cultural practices is the book Burying SM (Cohen and Odhiambo 1992), which examines the legal wrangle over whether a Luo man, S. M. Otieno, was to be buried in his Nyanza homeland or, as he had requested, in Nairobi where he had lived with his Kikuyu wife.

According to Oteyo, photographs showing many Luo people openly adopting European dress at such an early date were a shock to some Luo visitors, who had expressed to him their belief that the Luo had resisted European cultural influ-ences until much later. Other visitors responded negatively to the idea that some Luo people were still dressing in a traditional manner well into the colonial period: “Dates on photographs show a lot of variation by virtue of artifacts e.g. clothing and chronology. It depicts too rapid [a] progression from one stage of develop-ment to another within too short [a] period. This depicts [a] falsification of [the] facts. The photo in which there are two men and many naked women depicts not so well for the Luo Community in 1925.” In fact, the photograph in question, documented on the museum’s mount as being by the commercial photographer D. V. Figueira of Mombasa (PRM1998.189.11.1) and donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1932 by its curator Henry Balfour, is likely to be an even earlier image (perhaps ca. 1910) which was being sold by the studio. Yet the response reveals that some visitors felt that photography and received histories of cultural change had a problematic relationship, and that captions and documentation relating to chro-nology were potentially disputable.

Given the direct curatorial connections made between many of the images and Luo colonial history, we anticipated comments from visitors that addressed the difficult or troubling contexts of their production. The portraits by Hobley, for instance, were taken against the backdrop of the earliest colonial administrative


headquarters in Nyanza at Kisumu; yet the asymmetry of power relations suggested in the images between those being photographed and the person taking the photographs, whose authority is mirrored in the colonial building beyond, was not mentioned in any comments. Likewise, although Evans-Pritchard’s role as an anthropologist coming to study Luo society was mentioned in the exhibition introduction, no comments by visitors addressed the role of colonial anthropol-ogy in Kenya, and the scientific uses to which the images had been put at the colonial center back in Britain, as demonstrated by their deposit in an ethnographic museum. One reason for this may have been the curatorial context in which Oteyo’s introduction sought to frame the archival resource: “These photographs are important documents about the Luo past, both in terms of the natural and social environment. Luo settlements, buildings, clothing, material culture and gen-eral way of life are all recorded in these photographs.”

Thus, both Oteyo as curator and the visitors who left comments were involved in a process of looking past the historical contexts of image production that preoc-cupy Western curators, a process in which reclaiming the histories within the images themselves is more important than the role of the photographer which, after all, is more implicit than explicit in the images. The process of looking past troubling historical contexts of production in order to reclaim histories and ances-tors was first described by Aboriginal historian Michael Aird in the context of Australia, who wrote that he had often “seen Aboriginal people look past the stereotypical way in which their relatives and ancestors have been portrayed, because they are just happy to be able to see photographs of people who play a part in their family’s history” (2003, 25). Photographs, of course, are both authored documents, patterned by the intentions of the photographer, as well as the site of cultural encounters and historical intersections. As Wareham notes in relation to Pacific archives, “although records created by outsiders reflect the expectations and aspirations, values and beliefs, of their creators … they constitute vital parts of the evidential systems for the countries to which they relate. They are also sources for the reassertion of cultural identities and rights through the renegotiation of histories” (2002, 199).

The recodability of photography when carried between differing cultural contexts was particularly evident in the Paro Manene project, where the representa-tional potential of the image was transformed according to local reference. While Oteyo’s introductory text opened up for consideration the broader economic and imperialistic (colonial) framework in which the photographs were produced, it also sought to leave this framework implicit, and encouraged viewers rather to reclaim the social and cultural information “recorded” within the images. Indigenous processes of “looking past” are not historically naive readings of photographs that are somehow more completely or more expertly understood by Western curators and academics. They are, in fact, extremely nuanced his-torical processes of cultural reclamation, social reincorporation, and spiritual repatriation.7


The exhibitions

The exhibitions were originally planned by us to begin in March 2006, with three local venues running for several days each, followed by a possibly extended run at Kisumu Museum, where the panels and other materials would be permanently deposited. The exhibition venues of Lwak Catholic Church Hall, Bondo Town Hall, and the Siaya Farmers Training Centre Hall were all chosen because they were the main population centers in the area where Evans-Pritchard took photographs in 1936. The exhibition was also shown by special request in one of the classrooms at Rakombe Primary School (Figure 14.2). Although a schedule had been agreed by Peter Nyamenya, the curator in Kisumu, Oteyo learned on his arrival that the direc-tor of regional museums at the National Museums of Kenya had overruled the curator’s decision, and ordered that the exhibition be postponed for several months so as not to overlap with another exhibition then on display in Kisumu. Although the exhibition could have continued at the other local venues, we considered our collaboration with Kisumu Museum to be important, as Nyamenya was trying to establish more Luo cultural displays in Kisumu, and because we aimed to raise awareness about the project through an exhibition there, as well as permanently deposit the exhibition materials with him. So new plans were drawn up to link the exhibitions with the Migwena Cultural Festival held near Bondo between December

FIGURE 14.2 Pupils at Rakombe Primary School view the exhibition in one of their classrooms, February 2007.Photo: Washington Ouma Ogutu. Courtesy Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (PRM 2008.5.105).


30, 2006 and January 3, 2007. This event was initiated only a few years previously as an attempt by Siaya and Bondo Districts to revive Luo cultural activities. Two stu-dent assistants, Ezekiel Ochieng Otiende and Washington Ouma Ogutu, attended this festival and photographed some of the activities. The assistance of these stu-dents was vital in helping visitors to the rural exhibition venues; for instance in translating the English captions into Dholuo if necessary, moving the exhibition materials between the venues, and recording responses. They also visited a village in South Nyanza well known locally for its use of traditional material culture in order to make a visual record. The photographs they took at the Migwena Festival, as well as of the Paro Manene exhibitions, were all deposited with the Pitt Rivers Museum, where they are available via its online catalog.

Although, by January 2007, Oteyo had ensured that local preparations for the exhibitions were in place and all venue bookings confirmed, there were still a num-ber of difficulties. In Bondo town, the venue suddenly shifted from the County Council offices to the Town Hall, and in Siaya town from the County Council offices to the Farmers Training Centre, because the council clerks could not accom-modate the change in dates caused by the delayed start to the exhibitions. Given that the only funding for the project was the meager funds supporting Morton’s Career Development Fellowship at the University of Oxford,8 there was little capac-ity for unexpected expenditure. Inevitably, however, such expenditure did arise. Diplomatically, Oteyo phrased this area of expenditure as “protocol payments.” Occasionally, institutional employees who had agreed to facilitate aspects of the project would request cash to buy provisions for invited guests at events supposedly to mark the occasion. Outreach activity was also costly and time-consuming, par-ticularly since transport needed to be hired. In most instances there was no public transport and bicycles were needed to reach families involved in the research, an aspect of the project that will be discussed in more detail later. The local monopoly operated by bicycle hirers allowed them to quote extraordinary rates, and there was no choice but to use their services. Contacting and visiting families related to some of the named individuals in Evans-Pritchard’s photographs was a particular goal of the research team, but it brought additional logistical difficulties.

It had already been established some years previously by Oteyo that a number of families in the area connected to the photographs were identifiable, and it was hoped that more would emerge in the process of exhibiting the photographs. Since the area is often poorly served by roads and transport, and since many key informants are elderly, we felt it was essential that the exhibition travel to several venues in the local-ity. Even so, the three days allocated for each exhibition was usually insufficient, given that it took several days for word to spread about the exhibition. This resulted in people arriving to see the displays for several days after they had moved on. The timing of the exhibitions was important: first, in order to enable school groups to visit, it was essential that the exhibitions coincide with term dates; second, they needed to be in the dry season for ease of transport and travel, for both the public and exhibition staff; third, they needed to be during a period when people were


normally free from farming chores, which can be intensive at certain times. Taken together, these local calendrical considerations were considered important so as to maximize the chance that local people would be free to visit something such as a photo exhibition. We also organized for longer than normal opening times to enable as many people as possible to attend, given the distances some people had to travel on foot. This meant that the exhibitions usually opened at eight in the morning and closed after five in the afternoon, or for as long as the respective venues would allow.

Prior to the exhibitions, announcements were made on two local vernacular radio stations, Radio Ramogi and Victoria Radio. Adverts were not placed in local newspapers, which are read by only a small minority of Luo people, whereas most families gather to listen to radio broadcasts and spread news about events by word of mouth. Exhibition schedules were also sent to local schools, colleges, and churches, as well as other organizations. A number of flyers were posted in key positions in market villages, hospitals, and public places. As people arrived at the venues, folders of copies of the photographs were available to browse through, and all were encouraged to leave comments in notebooks either about the exhibition itself or about the imagery or information presented. The decision was made early on to provide the exhibition information and captions in English only, without Dholuo or Kiswahili translations. Few Luo are literate in Dhuluo, and it was felt by Oteyo that additional captions in Kiswahili would be unnecessary, as well as unfea-sible given the restricted space for text on the exhibition panels. Some visitors, however, did remark negatively on the lack of Kiswahili (although, interestingly, not Dholuo) in the exhibition, but it is notable that only one comment in the notebook was in Kiswahili. Comments in these notebooks frequently noted the need for local cultural institutions that might make copies of such archives available permanently. For instance, the chair of Bondo Town Council noted that “The exhibition has clearly shown that our (Luo) past can be reconstructed … We recommend as a community that a museum be set up to preserve the Luo culture.” The district cul-tural officer in Siaya also sounded a note of frustration in his comment that “This is work in the right direction. We have a plot for a cultural centre but no funds.” It is quite clear that, for most Luo visitors to the exhibitions, the historical and colonial contexts of the photographs (by a colonial administrator and anthropologist) were less important than the image content. This was perhaps not surprising considering the way in which the images were presented, within themed narratives relating to Luo culture and history, rather than the contexts in which the photographs were taken. It was the potential of images as carriers of historical information (or even nostalgia, as invoked by the exhibition’s Dholuo title) that people were being encouraged to consider. Oteyo has himself subsequently posed a number of ques-tions about his role as curator, such as whether his use of the archival imagery in order to present a particular story about Luo history was not neutral enough to enable a space for alternative narratives. Although visitors did not leave comments to this effect, Oteyo subsequently felt highly conscious of his curatorial role as being too manipulative of the material in certain directions, and that future displays


should be less structured and more open-ended. We consider further the interpre-tive frameworks and responses to the exhibitions below.

Apart from some reception parties at the exhibition venues, the team also sponsored some entertainment alongside one exhibition opening. An evening of traditional band and dance was staged in a rural village near Siaya, where a local musician played ohangla drum music to entertain the public and publicize the forthcoming exhibition. At all exhibition venues, the three project assistants were on hand to discuss the displays and the collaboration with the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Ezekiel Ochieng Otiende was a former graduate of Nairobi University who had worked as a research assistant for Oteyo in the past; Perez Achieng was a local assistant who proved extremely useful in establishing links and arranging appointments; Washington Ouma Ogutu, also a graduate of Nairobi University, was seconded to the project by the British Institute in Eastern Africa, which saw an opportunity for him to gain valuable experience. The exhibition venues were often fairly small and dark, with little provision for exhibitions, but nonetheless the team managed to hang or fix the exhibition panels along the walls by using a length of string, such as at Rakombe Primary School, or by sticking them directly to the walls, as at Siaya. The panels containing the photographs and text were prepared as Microsoft Word documents, printed on A1 board, and laminated so as to with-stand frequent transit, handling, and dirt. In addition, single photographs and accompanying labels were also printed and placed on the tables for children and the elderly to sit down and peruse. Attendance by the public exceeded the team’s expectations, with around 500 people visiting per day.

Local exhibitions in Kenya are frequently political, or politicized, events. It was therefore necessary to make appropriate arrangements to meet government officials and other important individuals. In most cases a meeting would be arranged to talk to them when they visited the exhibition. In special cases, particularly when we wanted to record their views or to collect more information, the team would go to meet them elsewhere. A sample of instances can be mentioned here: an interview with Mr. Ogola, the Bondo District food security chairman, on the topic of Luo culture, con-ducted during his visit to the exhibition at Bondo; Siaya district cultural officer Mr. Ondeyo had a long discussion with the team on his plans for the conservation of material culture items in Siaya; the entire membership of Bondo Town Council, led by its chair, Paul Olando, also visited the exhibition and expressed a desire to replace the current portraits of council members with those portraits of chiefs featured in the exhibition; an official meeting with Kisumu Museum curator Peter Nyamenya and his staff to receive the presentation album of photographs, notes, and CDs. Another notable meeting took place with prominent Luo businessman Isaac Omolo Okero and his son about the identity of one man photographed by Hobley, identified in the original caption as “Ukuri,” whom Isaac Okero claimed to be his father. The team also interviewed the celebrated Luo historian Bethwell Ogot (chancellor of Moi University) and discussed with him the early colonial period in Nyanza and a whole range of other issues regarding research on Luo material culture.


In addition to the exhibition, the aims of the project were to leave copies and a catalog of the photographs with relevant institutions for future use by Luo researchers and the wider community and to establish new institutional relation-ships to foster future research and collaboration. In order to achieve this we deposited one folder and two CDs containing all the images and data with Kisumu Museum and the British Institute in Eastern Africa, with both of which the authors have established research connections. Kisumu Museum was an obvious institu-tion with which to establish a relationship. The curator, Peter Nyamenya had made connections between the material culture shown in the photographs and those displayed in the Kisumu Museum galleries. For him, such connections brought new contexts and understandings to his displays, allowing people to see how objects were used. This is how photographs have been mobilized in museum dis-plays since photography was invented but, because most African museums have not had access to visual archives, this display strategy has frequently been unavail-able. Nyamenya therefore saw it as quite fitting to display the exhibition panels inside the Kisumu Museum galleries so as to supplement the understanding of the galleries both for the museum staff and for visitors.

Photographic homecomings

The archive is an active historical process (Edwards and Morton 2009, 10) rather than a static entity, the verb “to archive” being one that involves repeated attempts to refigure or reimpose meaning on the deposits of the past. Increasingly, and espe-cially within ethnographic museums, such refiguring of the archive involves the flow of interpretation and knowledge from indigenous communities back to the archive, sometimes as a result of so-called visual repatriation. As Wareham argues, “repatriation can also be a matter of revitalizing archival institutions, returning life which exists when a community recognizes the heritage contained in archival sources and is actively involved in its governance and management” (2002, 204). This is something which the Pitt Rivers Museum, in collaboration with Maseno University in Kisumu and Bondo University College, has attempted to address through a number of initiatives. In 2009 the Pitt Rivers Museum sponsored a young Luo historian, Pius Cokumu, teaching at Maseno University, to visit Oxford to research the collections and continue discussions about local engagement. As a way of responding to exhibition visitor comments, in 2010 the museum entered into a collaborative agreement with the newly founded Bondo University College to try to initiate a center for the study of Luo material and visual culture, and to collabo-rate on future research and teaching on them. In 2010 the new Principal of Bondo University College wrote that “I can secure a room for the centre but in the long run, we need a modern resource centre for this project. I am foreseeing this being the only one of its kind in the region.”9 However, since then, little progress has been made, with few resources on either side for capacity-building projects. The project


website (http://photos.prm.ox.ac.uk/luo) has been used extensively both within Kenya and by the diaspora, and the museum occasionally receives correspondence from those who can add information to its catalog. In 2012 the museum began to collaborate with Luo Social Forum, a diaspora organization in London, which resulted in a short film featuring oral histories and historical photographs.10

The term “visual repatriation” is now a familiar one in the anthropological litera-ture on ethnographic photography (Bell 2003), covering a wide variety of practices that all ultimately derive from the intellectual and moral imperative to open up Western archives to local communities. The realization that photographs held by institutions around the world were potentially important documents for indigenous histories (Dubin 1999, 72) has led to a profound shift in curatorial practices, research and notions of ownership, access, rights to knowledge and to ideas of evidence and value (Edwards and Morton 2009, 18). In relation to visual material, however, the use of the term “repatriation” is problematic, partly because the term derives from quite a different set of legal and institutional processes involving objects, especially human remains. In most visual repatriation projects to date, issues surrounding the control and ownership of collections has effectively been left unchanged after the project. In one of the most significant projects to date, the Kainai Project run by Laura Peers and Alison Brown, in which photographs by Beatrice Blackwood were returned to the Kainai Nation in Canada, these issues were nascent and revealing. The protocol agree-ment signed between the Nation and the Pitt Rivers Museum states that, although the project sought to “repatriate a complete set of copies of Blackwood’s photographs and all associated documentation to the Kainai Nation, to be held in whichever reposi-tory they wish, and for any purpose that the Nation sees fit,” the original photographs are, however, “owned by the Pitt Rivers Museum, and thus are copyrighted, in accord-ance with English law, to the Museum” (Brown and Peers 2006, 216–218). Part of the problem with the term “repatriation” when it comes to photographic projects is the oversimplification of complex histories and exchanges. The term invokes the concept of a movement of things between jurisdictions or nation-states, when the histories involved might be much more complex, transnational, transcultural, and fluid. Furthermore, in much of the literature on such projects (e.g., Bell 2003), the term is often used to describe the research methodology of a lone researcher rather than the sharing of resources, knowledge, and information between an archive and a commu-nity. The depersonalizing sense of the term also glosses over what is usually a highly emotional homecoming of an ancestor (Morton and Oteyo 2009). The redemptive qualities inherent in the concept of repatriation should not be entirely dismissed, however, since the return of photographs to indigenous communities involves much more than an engagement with the visual (Edwards 2006). One of the things Paro Manene clearly demonstrated was that more attention needs to be paid to the sociali-zation of images that are reintroduced and recirculated within indigenous communi-ties, especially the “spiritual repatriation” (Morton 2012) of ancestors through the agency of the photographic “likeness” in its homecoming.

At an early stage of the Paro Manene project a number of families connected to the photographs were identified, all relations of three Luo chiefs photographed by


Evans-Pritchard in 1936. These families were visited by Oteyo in February 2007 in order to elicit further information and to make a presentation of framed copies of the photographs. It soon became clear that these events constituted a highly emo-tional homecoming for the families in question. When Oteyo visited the homestead of the late Chief Ismail Owuor Molo (1901–1986) of Asembo, he was introduced to his three surviving wives (he had 10 in all), one of whom, Turfosa Omari, was pho-tographed by Evans-Pritchard on his 1936 visit as she had married Owuor earlier that year. Interestingly, Owen had in fact opposed the installment of Owuor as chief in Asembo in 1931 after the resignation of Daniel Odindo on account of accusations of corruption. Owuor was favored by the administration because he was a more conservative figure than some of the other candidates favored by younger people. Owen argued that the administration had been both too hasty in imposing a chief and had not given the local people enough say in the choice (Spencer 1982, 49–51).

Holding the framed portrait of Owuor (Figure 14.3), Turfosa Omari called his name and touched his image, saying that her husband had returned, and telling everyone that here was the man she had married. The framed photographs were

FIGURE 14.3 Two of Chief Owuor’s surviving wives, Dorina Owuor (left) and Turfosa Omari (center), with Gilbert Oteyo, holding the framed portraits of Owuor.Photo: Peres Kaunda. Courtesy Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (PRM 2008.5.69).


then taken into one of the houses, and one was then placed next to a portrait of one of Owuor’s sons, Paul Wariru, so that the family could compare their facial resemblance (Figure 14.4). The way in which the portraits were emotionally received, and more especially the way they were treated afterwards, as they were taken to Owuor’s grave where his name was called repeatedly, is in accord with findings in other ethnographic contexts, where photographs are sometimes “understood as one way in which the dead or absent kin and places can become (partially) present again” (Smith and Vokes 2008, 284). Other studies have focused on the use of photographs of deceased family members and elites as part of a process of commemoration, in which the mobilization of the photograph effectively extends the social agency of the deceased person beyond death. Gore (2001), for instance, discusses how images of previous Obas of Benin are mobilized to continue their agency into the present and thereby bolster the hegemony of traditional rulers. Strassler (2010, 150–153) also discusses the use of ancestor photographs in Chinese Javan domestic and commercial settings, linking it to Chinese rituals of ancestor worship. It may be that the return of Owuor through his portrait will constitute a new extension of his agency or authority, and further fieldwork may reveal what social impact the return has had.

FIGURE 14.4 Two framed portraits in the home of a surviving wife of Chief Owuor. On the left is a portrait of one of Owuor’s sons, Paul Wariru, and on the right is the framed copy of a photograph by E. E. Evans-Pritchard (PRM 1998.349.192.1) showing Owuor with several of his wives, presented to the family in 2007. The photographs were placed side by side by Owuor’s wife to show the resemblance between father and son. Courtesy Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (PRM 2008.5.76.1).


The next family visited by Oteyo was that of Ezekiel Onyango, who had mar-ried nine wives and was the subject of a portrait by Evans-Pritchard in 1936. The household head was Charles Obewa, son of the third wife, who received a framed copy of the portrait of his grandfather. As with the family of Owuor, the portrait became the only treasured image of their relative, and was the starting point for many recollections. The portrait of Onyango is striking – he stands erect and to attention, with a cane held under his left arm, reflecting his rank of sergeant.

The third family visited was that of Jacob Odawo, who is pictured a number of times by Evans-Pritchard accompanying him and Archdeacon Owen on several occasions in his role as a native assessor (court interpreter and adviser on native custom), and who later became an assistant chief. Oteyo was able to meet a surviv-ing wife, Gawdensia Anyango, who, on seeing the portrait of her late husband, related how his involvement with Evans-Pritchard and Archdeacon Owen, as well as other outsiders, had led to his eventual demise when he was implicated in the disappearance of tong Alego (the spears of Alego, the clan founder of Alego Location) as well as other sacred objects. The taint of his involvement with these matters never left him and he lived his later life in poverty. The poverty witnessed during this particular family visit left Oteyo troubled, and recast the project in a new perspective. The small cash gift that he made to the family could not alter the fact that their situation was serious. As Oteyo wrote shortly afterwards:

It is saddening to say that during my family outreach, I witnessed their stark poverty … In one case, a young school-going boy who is a grandson of Evans-Pritchard’s photographed Chief pleaded with me to help him buy school uniform. I was even more sympathetic to his jigger-infested feet than his going to school. I really do not know what I can do in such situations. As a Luo and more so as a researcher, I feel subdued when my informers are in this condition.

What the team were faced with at this point in the project was a conflict between the goals of a research project, in which the presentation and reception of framed copies of historical photographs was considered integral to the research process, and a completely different set of priorities on the ground. While most people were pleased to receive copies of the photographs – and the emotional homecomings of some portraits attest to this – troubling questions emerged about the nature of the relationship thus formed between the families and the museum, and what its future intentions and obligations were. This situation was compounded by the fact that the family contacts were made by Oteyo and other Kenyan assistants, who did not directly represent, but who nonetheless were perceived by the families to be associated with, the Pitt Rivers Museum. What we had not anticipated sufficiently was the fact that the visual homecoming of an ancestor from a remote Western archive was interpreted as the forging of a special relationship between the ances-tor and those involved in the return. On the back of several of Evans-Pritchard’s working prints from his Luo trip in 1936 are the scribbled note “Jacob wants,”


indicating that Odawo had requested copies at the time. Perhaps Evans-Pritchard did send him copies, but none had ever been seen by his surviving wife. The pres-entation made to her in 2007 went some way to fulfilling this 70-year-old fieldwork promise, but does not address the expectations raised as a result. On May 21, 2008, more than a year after the exhibitions had ended, Oteyo wrote: “Jacob’s wife died yesterday and [is] to be buried Friday and the poor lady had left a request that I buy her burial material. The family came to see me today.” The expectations of contin-ued patronage forged through the research process is one that Oteyo as a local researcher continues to experience.

Conclusion

Paro Manene was a series of local exhibitions conceived and curated by a Luo researcher who wished to take an archive home, using photography to think about the past – as indeed the exhibition’s Dholuo title invited people to do. But the Pitt Rivers Museum was not a passive partner in this process, opening its doors to an African researcher to use material in any way he saw fit. The project was the out-come of several years of collaboration between Oteyo and the museum, and was considered an extension of a major project on its collections from South Sudan undertaken there between 2003 and 2005.11 In this sense the research process mir-rored that of Evans-Pritchard himself, in extending an existing scholarly interest in Nilotic material and visual culture.

But the real impetus to the project was the moral and intellectual imperative to reassociate local histories and meanings, which are frequently suggested in the social relationships within the images but which so often remain absent from the narratives the archive tells about itself – the museum’s documentation. Oteyo ended one seminar presentation about the project in Oxford with the thought that, although as a Luo he felt in a privileged position to interpret the photographs to the Luo community, he imposed his own narratives and biases on the archive as much as any other researcher. The shift of curatorial authority and voice in the project is arguably of less significance than other collaborative elements: that the exhibitions were taken to local venues such as church halls and farmers’ training centers; that they were advertised on vernacular radio and so perceived by people as for them rather than for others; that the exhibition assistants were local students; that people could leave feedback and use the spaces to debate and discuss history rather than silently appreciate images in a gallery space.

The questions we posed at the beginning of this chapter all centered on the crucial problem of writing history in a cross-cultural context, the residual tensions between practices that emerge from historically oral and literate societies, and the continuing asymmetries of power between societies who archive and those whose main preoc-cupation is to survive. In particular, the process we describe in this chapter of “looking past” (Aird 2003) the colonial contexts of such photographs, and reclaiming the


histories within them, needs further research and understanding. There is a danger, for instance, that colonial histories and contexts of production become de- emphasized in the search for contemporary relevance, by both indigenous audiences and Western curators when they should form part of indigenous histories.

Recent anthropological writing on the history of photography has indeed explored the multiple histories of the technology itself, and its inherent uncontain-ability within one frame of reference (Pinney and Peterson 2003; Lidchi and Tsinhnahjinnie 2009). As Elizabeth Edwards argues, “we expect photographs to tell, but find them remarkably resistant, for, like history, they do not lend them-selves to being dealt with in any definite way” (2001, 9). Rather than seeing photography as a fundamentally Western technology appropriated by others, both anthropologists and indigenous artists and writers have sought to highlight the way in which museum collections have been remade and rethought in contem-porary culture, how archival images and their often difficult colonial contexts are engaged with in order to reclaim ancestors (Pinney 2003, 4–8; Smith and Vokes 2008), as well as to achieve “visual sovereignty” (Tsinhnahjinnie 2009, 10–13). This chapter has sought to contribute to these debates through a reflexive analysis of a collaborative exhibition project in western Kenya, which has opened up a new area of relevance for ethnographic museums in the future.

One of the greatest challenges of such a project is how to adequately respond to the requests and expectations of local people. Requests ranged from the general, such as “God bless you to come with more facts,” to the more specific “link up with Village Development Committees for discussion and proper document for District development.” The main theme, although diverse, was that local African institutions were looking for help to initiate heritage projects, especially for education and tourism. As one comment put it, “Our past is paramount to understanding today’s occurrences and future focus … we have a plot for a cultural centre but with no funds. We recommend that any support i.e. financial, will be welcome so that we can construct a cultural centre.” Understandably, local perceptions are that projects developed in partnership with Western institutions have resources attached to them. Inevitably the question of development in a region such as Nyanza is high on the agenda and never far from people’s thoughts. People come to a remote village hall to see a display of historical photographs involving an elite British university museum. For the team this was the end point of several years’ research and planning – what funding bodies term “ outcomes.” For the local com-munity, however, “outcomes” are not the end point of a research project: they are the beginning point of a set of relationships established by the project. Shortly after the exhibitions ended, Oteyo wrote a short report on the exhibition responses gathered, concluding that:

What level of help and commitment to the institutions and the community can the Museum afford in promoting and fostering these relationships? Looking at the com-ments and suggestions, I know that the Luo community and even Kisumu Museum


would view the photographs, albums, and records as a great help in the quest to know and research their past. However, looking at the comments and suggestions registered by the public and officials, they are telling us that this in itself is not enough. An economically rewarding financial venture for cultural development would be welcomed. These suggestions about cultural centres and community museums do point to that.

Such expectations are partly driven by Kenyan public perceptions of museums in the country. The public in Kenya believe that the notion of public museums belonging to the community and the public is there on paper and in the political rhetoric, but in reality most people feel divorced from them. This has always cre-ated mistrust as to what the role of museums is in Kenya. If you talk to Luo peo-ple about Kisumu Museum or the Jaramogi Mausoleum and Museum in Bondo, they will tell you that they do not necessarily serve the interests of ordinary peo-ple. Is that why people talk about the need for a Luo cultural center or museum? How would that differ from Kisumu Museum? What exactly can be done to bring together Kisumu Museum, the Luo community, and Western institutions in a more productive relationship? Although the British Museum, through its Africa Programme, is making excellent progress in training and capacity building in the museum sector on the continent, as are other initiatives such as the Getty East Africa Programme, there are still doubts in the public as to whether they will get easy access to collections deposited with local institutions operated by the National Museums of Kenya, stemming from perceptions about difficult proto-cols and official secrecy. Whether these perceptions are entirely correct is not particularly relevant; it is the perception of a disconnection between heritage institutions and the interests of the local population that lies behind many of the responses to the Paro Manene project.

Notes

1 We are grateful to Paul Lane and the British Institute in Eastern Africa for the place-ment of Washington Ouma Ogutu as an assistant for the project, as well as Ezekiel Ochieng Otiende and Perez Achieng who also acted as research assistants. We would also like to thank Mzalendo Kibunjia and Peter Nyamenya, both formerly of the National Museums of Kenya, for their collaboration in this project. We are also grateful to Bondo Town Council and Siaya County Council for their help facilitating the project. To the many people who visited the exhibitions and to the families the team visited and who gave so much in return, thank you.

2 See http://southernsudan.prm.ox.ac.uk (accessed April 24, 2014).3 Evans-Pritchard does not state when in 1936 he visited Nyanza, but since we know that

his subsequent visit to the Nuer in South Sudan took place in October/November of that year, we can assume that his visit took place around August/September.


4 Indiana University Library, African Studies Collection, Nuer Field Notes Project, Letter to Blanche Cora Soule, December 24, 1931.

5 The quotations that follow are from http://photos.prm.ox.ac.uk/luo/page/ exhibition-encounter-europeans/ (accessed April 24, 2014).

6 Quotes from visitors to the Paro Manene exhibitions are all taken from the original visi-tors’ book (Pitt Rivers Museum Photograph Collections, Related Documents File for collection 2008.5).

7 The term “spiritual repatriation” was employed during a recent discussion with Australian artist Christian Thompson, who used it to describe the processes involved in his artistic work based on historical photography. It is a very appropriate term for the processes of ancestral return involved in the Paro Manene project.

8 For more information, see http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/fellowship.html (accessed April 25, 2014).

9 Prof. Stephen Agong, pers. comm., February 2, 2010.10 Video produced by Laura Mitchison for Luo Social Forum, 2012.11 Evans-Pritchard donated all of his South Sudan field photographs to the Pitt Rivers

Museum, University of Oxford, in 1966. See http://southernsudan.prm.ox.ac.uk for a full online catalog of the South Sudan photograph and object collections held at the Pitt Rivers Museum. The cataloging and digitization of the collections was made pos-sible by a grant from Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to Jeremy Coote and Elizabeth Edwards in 2003, for a project entitled “Recovering the Material and Visual Cultures of the Southern Sudan: A Museological Resource.”

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Christopher Morton is Curator of Photograph and Manuscript Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum and Departmental Lecturer in Visual and Material Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. He trained in history and then anthropology, completing a DPhil in social and cultural anthropology at the University of Oxford in 2002 and conducting fieldwork in northern Botswana. He is the author of numerous articles on photog-raphy and anthropology, especially relating to Africa, and his edited books include Photography, Anthropology and History: Expanding the Frame (Ashgate, 2009) and Wilfred Thesiger in Africa (Harper, 2010).

Gilbert Oteyo is an independent researcher. An archaeologist and cultural anthro-pologist by training, he was educated at Nairobi University in the early 1980s, and completed an MSt in Archaeology at the University of Oxford in 1998. He was Research Assistant at the British Institute in Eastern Africa, Nairobi, between 1984 and 2000, during which time he was involved in numerous archaeological projects in Kenya and elsewhere. In recent years he has undertaken archaeological and anthropological research in Nyanza, in collaboration with the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, which has resulted in a number of publications, as well as educational work with the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford. He lives and works in Bondo district in western Kenya.

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The Paro Manene Project: Exhibiting and Researching Photographic Histories in Western Kenya

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