Photo Cameroon: Studio Portraiture, 1970s-1990s

Abstract

Photo Cameroon plunged visitors into superimposed, disparate worlds: the studios of twentieth century Cameroonian photographers and a museum installation where COVID-19 dictated the design. Even the photographers on view—Jacques Toussele (1939–2017), Joseph Chila (b. 1948), and Samuel Finlak (b. 1958)—communicated three different atmospheres and styles. Toussele, the eldest and best-known in the West, expressed an urban, adventurous style. A buzz of activity surrounded his studio, Photo Jacques, which operated in the town of Mbouda from 1959 to 2006. The museum images often suggested this playful hustle-and-bustle. In one emblematic image, two young men wear bell-bottom trousers, sport-shirts, and athletic shoes. Each, prominently displaying a bottle of Sprite, turns away from the other. One looks up, the other down. Behind them, three layers of Toussele’s popular backgrounds are stacked helter-skelter, signaling a wacky lark of a photo session (Fig. 1). Toussele’s nephew and apprentice, Joseph Chila, established his more sober studio, Photo Joseph, in the small town of Mayo Darlé. Working indoors or out, he used a hand-painted cloth background and artificial light. Samuel Finlak worked outdoors with natural light. An itinerant photographer around his village of Atta, he transformed village walls, houses, doorways, and landscapes into picturesque settings (Fig. 2). The three men could thrive as popular studio photographers by seizing the