Pictures of Zulus playing Zulus

Offensive captions show us the colonial eye, writes Karen Rutter

CAPE TOWN

PHOTOGRAPHY

Siliva ZuluWhere: Iziko Slave Lodge, phone 0214677229When: Until April 30 2012

THE captions of the Siliva Zulu photographic exhibition at the Iziko Slave Lodge are a shocker, embarrassingly politically incorrect in an era that is trying hard to get its ethnographic house in order.

"Zulu men spend hours on end chatting and smoking dagga ..."; "Cleanliness is to a certain extent one of the habits of the strong and healthy Zulu, which is not always a priority with other African tribes"; and so on ...

The commentary, all the more startling for its dry seriousness, accompanies this collection, which has some interesting twists and turns. At first glance, it appears to document indigenous rural life in South Africa in the early 20th century. But, it turns out, these are not actually in situ renderings of rural people, but shots of them on a film set. In essence, what we have are indigenous people acting the part of indigenous people.

The plot thickens. The film set under discussion was for the movie Siliva Zulu, the first feature made with an all-African cast. It was shot near Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal, by Italian explorer, adventurer and filmmaker Attilio Gatti in 1927. Gatti hired Italian anthropologist Lidio Cipriani to be his adviser on the set. Cipriani photographed the cast, who in the film "act" themselves and traditional characters in Zululand. He later passed these pictures off as "authentic" ethnographic documentation - together with his captions.

Cipriani was a professor of anthropology at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology in Florence, but he was fired for selling publicly owned anthropological face masks. The anthropologist was also a member of Mussolini's fascist party. With that background, the exhibition raises interesting questions about the colonial eye, the objectification of people in the name of scholarship (or art), and how we deal with it all now.

Award-winning photographer Paul Weinberg, senior curator of the visual archives at UCT Libraries, who scanned and printed Cipriani's negatives for the show, says: "There's no doubt that the Siliva Zulu exhibition is a typical example of colonial ethnographic photography of 'the other'".

As a photographer who has researched and published work on different communities in Southern Africa, including the San, Weinberg is well aware of the sensitivities in documenting cultures - although one could say he works against the genre, because he looks at real, not romanticised, environments.

Weinberg suggests that the Siliva Zulu exhibition - a project between the museum and the Italian Institute of Culture - offer the chance to debate and discuss. "How do we deal with the uncomfortabilities of this heritage?" he asks. "Do we destroy it, or do we embrace it, and ask how we read it?"

Weinberg said much work in this vein existed outside South Africa, in collections belonging to the former colonial powers. "We need to claim this heritage, and deal with the material. Context is critical - and I would also go so far as to suggest that, for example in the case of Siliva Zulu , [that we] share the work with the community where the images were taken 80 years ago and gauge their reception."

The exhibition is certainly worth a visit, for these and other reasons. It also offers a chance to watch the Siliva Zulu movie.

And without their baggage, Cipriani's photographs are beautifully rendered. Weinberg said: "Siliva Zulu, both the film and the portraits, should be seen in a context of a new South Africa where memory, retrieval of culture, heritage and rewriting of history is taking place."