Women Photographers in Africa: Lynn McLaren

The Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives (EEPA) is pleased to share the Lynn McClaren collection as part of the Women Photographers in Africa initiative. Eluned M. Demarest – better known professionally as Lynn McLaren (1922-2008) – was an American photojournalist whose work was published in National Geographic, Time-Life, Newsweek, and the New York Times and helped global audiences visualize foreign cultures and landscapes. Her collection (EEPA 2007-009) of 648 color slides (35mm), 38 color transparencies, and 10 black-and-white prints has been digitized and will be available online later this year.

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1922, McLaren graduated from Vassar College and the Missouri School of Photojournalism. In stark contrast with the experiences of even other working women at the time, she enjoyed a long career that permitted her to travel around the globe. Also photographing parts of Asia and Europe, her collection at the EEPA depicts Kenya and Tanzania in 1966. While the collection represents only a fraction of McLaren’s more than 50-year career, it samples several genres, compositions, and subjects that define both her artistic eye and professional portfolio. 

[Lugongo] sisal estate near Tanga, Tanzania

Photograph by Lynn McLaren, ca. 1966, EEPA 2007-009-0336. Lynn McLaren Collection, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution

Trade and agriculture of major crops and exports along the Swahili coast, including cotton, sisal, and mangrove poles, are represented extensively in the collection. Wide views of cotton and sisal plantations capture their vastness and suggest economic significance of the crops to the region, while expressive portraits of plantation workers locate the humanity within those vast landscapes and economies. Also included in the collection are numerous images of landscapes and animals seen in several East African "game parks," now known as conservation areas or national parks.

Carrying sisal stalks before processing, Tanzania

Photograph by Lynn McLaren, August 1966, EEPA 2007-009-0601. Lynn McLaren Collection, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution

An environmental portraitist, McLaren enjoyed photographing people in their natural surroundings. She was particularly drawn to compositions of people in doorways, and she often turned her lens toward domestic and women’s lives. McLaren’s point of view may noticeably depart from that of her male counterparts in subject matter, composition, and gaze. It also may depart from the points of view of African photographers, photographers of color, and non-journalistic photographers. Inherent to photographic mediums, the collection represents the photographer’s way of seeing her subjects.

[Arab man wearing kofia seated in front of carved door], Lamu Island, Kenya

Photograph by Lynn McLaren, February 1966, EEPA 2007-009-0061. Lynn McLaren Collection, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution

As an extension of the photographer’s eye, the camera lens necessarily captures the photographer’s point of view from their own cultural standpoint. The EEPA’s collections are unique among those of the larger National Museum of African Art because they primarily represent documentary and tourist photography by non-Africans, whereas the museum’s permanent collection items are generally created by Africans. This nature is important to understanding these photographic collections since critics describe photography as inherently voyeuristic and the camera as a tool of colonialism. A collective imagination of Africa and Africans as culturally homogenous at best and uncivilized at worst has been shaped by outsider photography published for the consumption of curious (if voyeuristic) outsiders, like much of McLaren’s work that reached global audiences through publications like National Geographic.  

As an American woman photojournalist, her images represent a gendered, racialized, and inquiring way of viewing two African nations during an important political period. While other collections in the Women Photographers series depict the peak of colonization as far back as the 1920s, McLaren’s images capture Tanzania and Kenya’s immediate postcolonial years (1961 and 1963, respectively). Several shots of Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s 1966 visit to Tanzania (EEPA_2007-009-0692) depict this transitional period. Although the Women Photographers arguably symbolize colonization in embodiment and medium, they also underscore how gender modifies gaze.

Leah Minadeo

Wayne State University, School of Information Sciences

Leah Minadeo is a graduate student of the MLS program at Wayne State University. During Summer 2022, Minadeo volunteered with the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives as part of their practicum, cataloging Lynn McLaren’s collection (EEPA 2007-009) and Marilyn Heldman’s collection (EEPA 2016-005) as part of the Women Photographers in Africa initiative. 

Pioneering Women Photographers in Africa: Marli Shamir

Marli Shamir and Peul (Fula) woman, Mopti, Mali, 1970, EEPA 2013-009-0322

The Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives (EEPA) is pleased to share the collection of the next featured photographer in our Pioneering Women Photographers in Africa series, Marli Shamir.  Shamir (1919-2017) was an Israeli photographer known for her extensive work in Burkina Faso, the Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, and Mali, which she completed from 1966 to 1973. Her collection (EEPA 2013-009) includes 1,817 black and white negatives (35mm and 120mm), 1,519 color slides, several hundred prints, and manuscript materials. The negatives have been digitized and will available online later this year.

Bamako man mending fishing net, Mali, 1968, EEPA 2013-009-0410

Shamir was intrigued with both the peoples and architecture of the Sahel region of western and north-central Africa. Trained at the Contempora (Contempora—Lehrateliers für neue Werkkunst) (1934-1937), a school in Berlin affiliated with the Bauhaus art movement, and in Copehagen, where she studied microphotography, her photos do not just document, but artistically depict the inhabitants and architecture of the Sahel. A specialist in black and white photography, she highlighted the stark differences and contrasts in light and angles, purposely juxtaposing dramatically different shades, textures, and shapes.

Windows and shutters, Timbukto, Mali, 1967, EEPA 2013-009-0750

In 1938, Shamir's life was seriously disrupted when she was forced to immigrate from Nazi Germany to Israel, where she lived in a kibbutz for a period of time. From 1941 to 1943, she worked as a scientific photographer at the Weizmann Institute in Raichoven and then, at just 26 years of age, opened her own photography studio in 1945 in Jerusalem. She ran this successful business for several years before marrying Meir Shamir, a former Israeli diplomat and ambassador in 1953. It was while living in Africa with her husband from 1966 to 1973 that she produced her most recognized body of work.

Bambara woman painting a Bokolanfini textile, Bamako, Mali, 1969, EEPA 2013-009-1197

During Shamir’s stay in Mali, she met Pascal James Imperato, a doctor and historian of African art, with whom she collaborated on the article, “Bokolanfini: Mud Cloth of the Bamana of Mali” (African Arts,  1970) [1]. Shamir also exhibited her work in 1976 at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in the exhibit SAHEL, which depicted the rural and urban architecture and people of Mali. The exhibition toured Europe later that same year. 

Man standing near ceramic rain pipes, Mopti, Mali, 1968,
EEPA 2013-009-0547

While most of the exhibitions of Shamir’s work have featured her photographs taken in Mali (especially in Djenne), Shamir was interested in exhibiting her images from the larger region, noting that doing so would provide the exhibit with important contextual information and add “some warm touch to it.” [Letter to Professor J. Brunet-Jailly, Director of Research at ORSTOM, October 13, 1998] [2].  This preference of inclusiveness is evident in her photographs: she took not just static shots, but also depicted the process of making art, of celebrations, of daily life; she strove to convey people’s stories.

Child by bread oven, Timbuktu, Mali, 1967-1970, EEPA 2013-009-0760

Joseph Brunet-Jailly, a French professor of economics, saw her exhibit and, deeply impressed, showed Shamir’s photographs to Albakaye Ousmane Kounta, the national poet of Mali. The images inspired Kounta to create poetry to accompany Shamir’s photographs. The resulting book, Djenne-Ferey –La terre habitee (France: Grandvaux, 2005), reflects the collaboration of the two artists and pays tribute to the people of Mali and its heritage. One of the Kounta's poems, "Les Saints" [3], alongside the accompanying image, follows:

San Friday Mosque, Mali, 1971, EEPA 2013-009-1653

Les saints

A chacun
Une couronne
Enrobée d'argile
Une caresse étirée
De la base jusqu'au sommet

A chacun deux trous de secrets 
L'un pour les voeux
Intimes qu'on murmure
L'autre pour les offrandes
Qu'on glisse dans l'ombre

Translation:

The Saints

To each
A crown
Clay clad
A stretched caress
From the base to the top

To each two holes of secrets
One for the wishes
Intimate whispering
The other for offerings
Slide in the shade

From 1977 to 1981, Shamir lived in Strasbourg where she worked with a Canadian researcher to study the new style of architecture in Mali. This work is now stored at the Center of Documentation in Strasbourg. After living for a few years in Paris in the early 1990s in order to familiarize herself with new techniques in color photography, Shamir returned to Israel with her husband. Shamir continued photographing local urban scenes in her neighborhood of Baka, Jerusalem late into her life, until she passed away at the age of 98 in 2017.

Bamako man wearing blown up "Boubou" on bicycle, Mali, 1966-1971, EEPA 2013-009-0396

We hope that you enjoy Shamir’s photographs as more are posted online. Be sure and check out the finding aid for more details. The EEPA holds an additional collection (EEPA 1995-025) of prints of Shamir’s work.  You can view that catalog record here.

The EEPA is open for researchers by appointment only, Tuesday-Thursday, 10-4. Please see the EEPA website for contact information.

[1] Pascal James Imperato and Marli Shamir, "Bokolanfini: Mud Cloth of the Bamana of Mali",  African Arts 3, no. 2 (Summer 1970): 32-41, 80.
[2] Marli Shamir Collection, EEPA 2013-009, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.
[3] Marli Shamir and Albakaye Ousmane Kounta, Djenne-Ferey –La terre habitee (France: Grandvaux, 2005), 22-23.


Eden Orelove
Photo Archivist
Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives
National Museum of African Art

Pioneering Women Photographers in Africa: Marilyn Houlberg

This blog post about Marilyn Houlberg continues the series about our Pioneering Women Photographers in Africa project.  The following post was written by Dr. Peter Haffner, a post-doc fellow at the National Museum of African Art who spent nine months researching Haitian art and the work of Marilyn Houlberg in the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives.  He holds a Ph.D. from UCLA in Culture and Performance from the interdisciplinary Dept. of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA, focusing on contemporary Haitian arts and culture. In the fall, Dr. Haffner will join the Art History faculty at Centre College as an Assistant Professor.

Peter Haffner researching in the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, April 25, 2019, Photograph by Brad Simpson

Marilyn Houlberg (1939-2012) wore many hats during her lifetime: artist, photographer, art historian dedicated to the arts of Yorubaland and Haiti, professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, curator of major exhibitions of Haitian art in the United States, and a trained anthropologist. Common to all of her her roles was her advocacy and support for the arts and religious practices of peoples of African descent. Many who knew her well describe her as a “bon vivant,” fiercely independent and warmly eccentric. With her mirrored sunglasses, ornate head-wraps, flashy statement jewelry, and flowing black clothing, she purposely played with an ambiguously “witchy” self-presentation that, even though she herself was not a manbo, or Vodou priestess, the chance that she just might be granted a certain access all its own. 

Houlberg seated with André Pierre in the artist's home, Haiti,
March 2005, EEPA 2012-004-2770.  Photographed here during his last days, 
Houlberg had a long, collaborative relationship with the famed 
painter and oungan, André Pierre.

One can see the extent of this access documented in over 5,000 photographs and almost four decades of field notes and related ephemera available in the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives at the National Museum of African Art. From her earliest experiences in the field, Houlberg never shied from difficult situations. She cut her teeth doing field research and museum work in Nigeria during the tumultuous period of the Biafra civil war. While working at the National Museum of Lagos in the late 1960s, she helped catalog and secure the museum’s holdings of traditional art objects. In scores of handwritten pages, she recorded the accession numbers and descriptions of thousands of objects as unrest in the streets threatened to spill into the museum. Such altruism was not limited to the works in the museums, as she helped many of her Igbo colleagues hide within the museum (Cosentino 2012).

Ife-Olu Solaru dressing hair, Ikenne, Nigeria, September 29, 1973, EEPA 2005-002-0091.  One of the many examples of sculptural virtuosity of Yoruba women's hairstyles.

Yoruba woman with elaborate hairstyle, Ikenne, Nigeria,
September 29, 1973, EEPA-2005-002-0092

Her Nigerian field research in rural areas encompassed subjects of special interest. In the male-dominated field of anthropology, she focused on areas both overlooked by her male colleagues and ones potentially inaccessible to them because of gender. She wrote of the social and political significance of women’s hairstyles, and how certain styles could be read as responses to everything from political conditions of military rule in Nigeria to the religious diversity within its borders (Houlberg 1979). Perhaps most important was her acknowledgement of the transformations that occurred in cultural forms over time, and how the dynamic shifts in more “traditional” motifs in response to their exposure to contemporary practices and materials were signs of cultural dynamism, not a pollution of more “pure” older forms. Her work with ibeji, or twin figures, among Yoruba peoples is one major illustration of this. Houlberg found examples of modern technologies like photography incorporated into the practice of honoring deceased twins among Yoruba women, and how mass-produced plastic dolls were often used in place of more traditional carved wooden ere ibeji in order to represent and honor a twin who has passed on to the next world (Houlberg 1973).

Flag Day Parade, Haitian Army/Guard Civil, Cap Haitien, Haiti, May 18, 1976, EEPA 2012-004-0760.
Houlberg captured this official celebration of soldiers in the northern city of Cap Haitien during the height of Baby Doc Duvalier's autocratic regime. Note the red and black flags adopted by the Duvaliers, later changed back to the original blue and red.

Houlberg refocused her scholarly attention in the late 1970s as she directed her research towards ibeji as they manifested in Haiti. Known among local Vodou practitioners as marasa, twins in Haiti had their own sets of practices and beliefs. Her research showed how systems of devotion to the marasa were indebted to corresponding West African ibeji traditions, but also how they underwent transformations in new cultural and geographic settings that testified to the dynamic adaptability of cultures, even in the face of horrors like the Middle Passage and the plantation slavery system of colonial St. Domingue (as Haiti was known before the Revolution).

Drummers (bata), Yoruba Egungun Festival, Ilara, Nigeria, July 22, 1982,
EEPA 2012-004-0622

Houlberg’s research gradually became more entrenched in Haitian subjects. Ironically, with the scapegoating of Haitians (among the other “H” groups of homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and heroin users) for the spread of HIV in the early 1980s, Houlberg was traveling more and more to the country. As the tourism boom from the 1970s came to a halt and, later, political turmoil engulfed the country as uprisings overthrew the autocratic government Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, Houlberg’s work in Haiti was ramping up. In fact, her field notes serve as valuable contemporaneous accounts of the shifts in Vodou practice and how devotees responded to these difficulties, as well as how the material changes manifested in the work of Haitian artists in Port-au-Prince.

Two ounsi (Vodou initiates) hold up sequined banners to conceal the activities of the oungan behind them,
Haiti, December 1985, EEPA 2012-004-0819

As Houlberg’s field notes and photographs progress chronologically, they demonstrate how she positioned herself as an adept facilitator for the exhibition, reception, and acquisition of Haitian art internationally, especially during times of hardship and unrest. During the U.S.-led embargo of Haiti (1991-94), Houlberg would often bring supplies and materials for artists, since goods were increasingly scarce in Haiti itself. Among her letters in the archives are those written by artists like Yves Telemak requesting materials from Houlberg or thanking her for the delivery of supplies of colorful beads and sequins, which would be sewn onto drapo (Vodou flags). Often, these deliveries would be exchanged for commissioned works that would then enter Houlberg’s ever-growing collection of flags. 

Bel-Air neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, St. Martin's street (next street from Tirremas), Haiti, January 1986,
EEPA 2012-004-0810. Houlberg made close associations with flag makers in Bel-Air, an epicenter of art
and Vodou practice in Haiti's capital.  

In 1994, President Bill Clinton ordered the U.S. Marine invasion to reinstate the democratically elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which also restored international trade to the country. This marked a time of great optimism in Haiti. For her part, Houlberg was busy with her work as the co-curator of the landmark exhibition, Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, which began at UCLA’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History (now named the Fowler Museum at UCLA) in 1995 and spent three years traveling to major institutions throughout North America. As the editor of the massive exhibition book, fellow curator Donald J. Cosentino has often received the lion’s share of the credit for Sacred Arts, but Houlberg’s field notes reveal just how integral she was to its success. Her art-world connections in Haiti, cultivated over years of research, proved crucial to the exhibition and the publication. Her relationships to artists like Telemak and the painter Andre Pierre – a grand elder of Haitian Vodou practice – as well as her longtime collaborator and friend, Georges René, whose tireless legwork opened myriad doors to Houlberg that were otherwise unavailable to her, were significant resources to the exhibition.

Houlberg's longtime collaborator and friend, Georges René, standing in front of a billboard that reads, "ANSAM NAP REBATI AYITI-MEN ANPIL CHAY PA LOU (together we will rebuild Haiti - many hands lighten the load), Haiti, circa 1990, EEPA 2012-004-0607.  This is one of many signs and posters to advertise Haitian resilience that Houlberg caught with her camera during the turbulent years that followed the fall of "Baby Doc" Duvalier in the mid-1980s. 

Houlberg died in 2012, leaving behind troves of material to the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives. Most of the photographs and field notes have been processed, but there still remains much of the video and audio components of Houlberg’s fieldwork to be digitized. Considering the breadth and scope of the available materials, we highly anticipate what the next phases of archiving will yield.

Bibliography:

Cosentino, Donald, Henry John Drewal, Katherine Smith, and Doran H. Ross. “Marilyn Jensen Houlberg.” African Arts 46, no. 2 (2013): 4–5. 

Houlberg, Marilyn Hammersley. “Social Hair: Tradition and Change in Yoruba Hairstyles in Southwestern Nigeria,” in The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment. Justine M. Corwell and Ronald A. Schwarz, eds.  World Anthropology. The Hague ; New York: Mouton, 1979. 349-398.

———. “Ibeji Images of the Yoruba.” African Arts 7, no. 1 (1973): 20–92. 

We hope that you enjoy Houlberg’s photographs as more are posted online.  You can view the collections’ finding aids and explore her photographs here:

Marilyn Houlberg Nigeria collections: EEPA 2005-002 and EEPA 2015-015 

Marilyn Houlberg Haiti collections: EEPA 2012-004 and EEPA 2015-016 

We encourage you to read more about the Pioneering Women Photographers in Africa project and explore other blogs in the series.




To obtain high-resolution images, permission for publication or exhibition, or make a research appointment, please contact the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art.