Fragile Legacies: The Photographs of Solomon Osagie Alonge by Amy J. Staples, Flora Edouwaye S. Kaplan, Bryna Freyer (review)

In the past thirty years, research and writings about the oeuvre and practice of professional African photographers have gained momentum. Today these luminaries, among them Jonathan Adagogo Green, Seydou Keita, and J.D. ‘Okhei Ojeikere, take their place in the global history of photography. Exhibitions devoted to the practice of African image makers have multiplied in recent years, reflecting the increased interest in their photographs, which also command attention of collectors and in the art market.

Enter Chief Solomon Osagie Alonge (1911–1994), who pursued parallel careers as official photographer at the royal court of the ancient Benin Kingdom in southeastern Nigeria and as owner of the Ideal Photo Studio in its capital, Benin City. His pictures, life well-lived, and legacies in the kingdom and abroad are the focus of this beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated book. It appeared in 2017 in conjunction with the second venue of the groundbreaking exhibition Chief S.O. Alonge: Photographer to the Royal Court of Benin at the National Museum of Benin in the kingdom’s capital, after it was first shown in 2014 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art (NMAfA) in Washington, DC (Auslander 2016).

Both the exhibition and publication, organized under the lead of Amy J. Staples, senior archivist of NMAfA’s Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives (EEPA), are the culmination of a project which began over ten years ago, when Flora Edouwaye S. Kaplan, an anthropologist who had conducted research in the kingdom and authored earlier essays referring to Chief Alonge, brought his archive to the attention of NMAfA (Kaplan 1990, 1991). Chief Alonge’s meticulously maintained archive of more than 3,000 documentary images and over 450 glass plate negatives from his studio ultimately came from Benin City to the EEPA. As the project to share his unique legacy evolved, the National Museum of Benin and NMAfA began to cooperate. Soon the endeavor included the Alonge family, Nigerian colleagues and authorities, photographers, and patrons of Chief Alonge’s studio in Benin City. The effort enjoyed the support of many in Nigeria, most importantly of the king of Benin, His Royal Majesty Oba Erediauwa, Omo N’Oba N’Edo Uku Akpolokpolo (r. 1979–2016), and Yusuf Abdallah Usman, Director General, National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nigeria.

The book opens with prefaces by Staples and Theophilus Umogbai, curator of the National Museum of Benin. Both focus on the collaboration between the two museums and the overall goal of making Chief Alonge’s archive accessible to Benin-Edo peoples in the kingdom, Benin-Edo communities elsewhere—including in the United States—and to viewers around the globe. In six chapters and five shorter essays, organized into three sections, the book features contributions by Nigerian and American authors who evoke the artistic, historical, and lasting significance of Chief Alonge’s oeuvre, which spanned fifty years.

The first section, “Photography and Visual Culture in Benin,” focuses on the Benin kingdom’s history, its exposure to photography, and the role of the new medium in Benin’s visual culture practices. Its three chapters reference the kingdom’s tragic fate during the establishment of British rule, which culminated in the so-called British Punitive Expedition and destruction and looting of the royal palace and Benin City in 1897. Soon thereafter Benin’s king, Oba Ovonramwen, who had ruled since 1888, was deported into exile in Calabar. In “Imaging | Imagining History,” Staples previews the sections and chapters in the book and then provides an overview of the rise of African professional photographers active in what is now Nigeria. Precursors of Chief Alonge include Neils Walwin Holm, H. Sanya Freeman...