“You’ll never forget what your camera remembers”: image-things and changing times in Capital Art Studio, Zanzibar

ABSTRACT

Capital Art Studio is the oldest photographic studio in Zanzibar today, and is unique in having survived the revolution of 1964. This essay reflects on the practices of remembrance performed by father and son, Ranchhod and Rohit Oza, in the studio since its inception in 1930. It does so by attending to the double nature of the photograph—simultaneously “two-dimensional image” and “three-dimensional thing”—and its paradoxical inscription of the changing times in Zanzibar. Focusing on the studio’s image-making practices and their material manifestations, the essay reflects on its presentation of competing visions of vernacular modernity and their states of ruination.

Keywords:

• memory
• photography
• ruination
• Stone Town
• Zanzibar