Edmond Fortier
Edmond Fortier (1862-1928) was a French photographer who moved to Dakar, Senegal in what was then French West Africa. From 1900 to 1910 he traveled extensively through the surrounding regions, photographing everything and everyone. Although his photos are valued today as a documentary record, he took them for a commercial purpose: he made them into postcards which he sold to tourists in his shop in Dakar. Dakar was a major port on the African coast, and almost all ships to and from South America stopped there.
In 1905-1906 he journeyed inland as far as Tombouctou (Timbuktu), Mali, photographing that city whose name conjures up the most remote spot on Earth, as well as the tribes that he encountered along the way.
After 1910 he stopped taking photographs and lived off of the proceeds of the postcards made from his archive of 3,500 photos.
This is a photograph of Fortier, a bit blurry, but notable because it shows his heavy, unwieldy camera. Most of Fortier's photos were scenes of towns and villages or of the native people. Many of his photos were of bare-breasted African women, which no doubt appealed to his postcard customers. His photos of nude African men are rare, but there are a few.
These are two men of the Bobo tribe in what is now Burkina Faso. Note that the entire costume of these men consists of a piece of string around the waist, cinched across the foreskin to hold the penis in an upright position.
A Bobo warrior. He is the same guy as the one on the left in the previous photo. Note the postage stamps. Like all of Fortier's photos, this was made into a postcard.
The same warrior with a woman. She's wearing some leaves for modesty; he's wearing nothing but his string.
Another Bobo couple. She is also wearing a few leaves for modesty, and again, a string is sufficient for him.
The second couple again. Now, apparently, she feels no need for modesty, either.
Finally, a group of men of the Koniagui tribe in what is now Guinea. Here, apparently, the well-dressed man wears some kind of penis sheath.
I should mention that the nudity of these photos is not typical. In all of Fortier's other photos that I have seen, men wore some kind of loincloth or wrapping, and women, though bare-breasted, covered up down below.
2 comments:
very interesting
The Bobo are interesting, mosly because we tend to associate Africa with circumcision and Europe (e.g., ancient Greece and Rome) and the Americas (Yanomami, Huaorani, in some ceremonies the Navajo and certain plains Indians) with that type of foreskin-lengthening.
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