Reflections On, and Of, the “Slide Show” in my Life

Abstract

This short essay provides an Afterword to the Special Issue, with an autobiographical commentary on the collections of colour slides made by my father and myself, especially in Africa from the 1950s to mid 1970s. Relevant connections are made with the work of the main contributors here and their common theoretical inspiration in the work of Alfred Gell. I point to the specific social relations required by the need for the amateur photographer to present their colour slides as a performance, which may be initially for family and friends but lends itself also to educational contexts. I have used my slides in lectures, as did my father, but also (along with audio recordings) as a part of my ethnographic documentation and research. Slide collections have quite a distinct social history, different from photographs on paper, and now constitute archival items in themselves, open to a variety of future uses.

Keywords:

• Photographs
• Colour Slides
• Africa
• Social Technology
• Archive