The Sudanese Gaze: Visual Memory in Post-Independence Sudan

“& black my only country.”
- “asmar”, Safia Elhillo

“The questions, though, that haunt us are: what role does the archive play in constructing knowledge about black subjectivity?...how do you tell a story that must be told and yet cannot be told?”
- Patricia J. Saunders, Fugitive Dreams of Diaspora: Conversations with Saidiya Hartman

There is a poem by Sudanese-American writer and poet, Safia Elhillo, by the title of “asmar” that I came across early in the summer of 2017. The Arabic word asmar/ أسمر, ambiguous and complex in its layered meanings, generally translates to mean “dark”. In the context of Sudanese culture and society, asmar is popularly defined as “copper”, likening the distinct color of one’s skin, one’s body, to the brown copper tone. Elhillo’s poem, fittingly titled, is a site in which a number of historical and cultural issues are confronted: there is the allusion to the asmarani of the Egyptian singer Abdel Halim Hafez, a tender reference to a type of ‘dark’ that more than likely resembles a light tan brunette like himself, rather than the specific dark ‘asmar’ that falls on the colorist scale of north Sudan. With these varying and complex connotations in mind, Elhillo’s poem recontextualizes the question of race and identity that has largely troubled, with significant material effects, a number of Sudanese people both in Sudan and abroad in the diaspora. An excerpt from Elhillo’s poem reads as follows:

العبيد هنا        the niggers are here
our mothers debark a copper child on
each hip       american future bluing
each life to match its new passport

& now & here the option to name the
asmar something new to pretend the word
in our new language is no longer black
despite     bilad al sudan     land of the

blacks as if our arabic will pale us
or blur the target disguise us as some
other other some more desirable
dusk    as if the bullets will hear our sons’

sorghum inflections & bend to find some
black that holds up against language & sea

***

black that holds up against language & sea
black the only name assigned my body
that ever felt like mine     black my hunted
kin   my hunted blood     & black my only

country    & asmar     & asmarani
& black that does not wait until called
a nigger or wait     to be asked who
taught me to speak an arab’s arabic

Black the only name assigned my body, that ever felt like mine, black my only country. It has long seemed that to be Sudanese, particularly from the north, is to have one’s racial and ethnic identity seemingly oscillate between fictitious questions regarding authenticity, questions that enforce binary notions of Sudanese identity formation: the cliché are we African or are we Arab? Within both the asking of and attempting to answer this question is the failure to recognize the competing global, historical, and rigidly enforced post-independence definitions of Sudanese identity. In a country where the population has limited and calculated access to its visual heritage, establishing an identity for oneself is highly problematic. The limited language we have used to describe ourselves as individuals was fabricated from a place where we learned and came to believe a fiction about our people as a collective. However, photography (and more broadly, the visual arts, including film, as well as writing and music) introduces a means through which Sudanese people —Sudanese youth, in particular —are allowed the space to define their collective cultural identity, critically interrogate the definitions that emerged prior, and translate a sense of pride in their subjectivity that extends beyond one’s national identity.

Mohamed Yahia Issa, “Untitled.” Courtesy of ELNOUR / Claude Iverne

In his essay, “The Sixties in Bamako: Malick Sidibe and James Brown”, Manthia Diawara touches on this phenomenon of identity formation through the lens of photography. Diawara explores the way in which the photographs Malick Sidibe captured of Bamako enable onlookers to revisit the youth culture of the 1960’s, a time when “...the young people in Bamako had embraced rock and roll as a liberation movement, adopted the consumer habits of an international youth culture, and developed a rebellious attitude towards all forms of established authority” (Diawara, 2). Thus, Sidibe’s photographs became an artifact through which one can see the desires of Bamakois youth who were determined to use the decolonization movement of the 1960s as an opportunity to define an identity for themselves. They “...internalized African culture, collapsed the walls of binary opposition between colonizer and colonized, and made connections between national frontiers with the diaspora and international youth movements..” in search of authentic self-actualization (Diawara, 5). With the departure of the colonizer from Mali, the youth of Bamako seized the city for themselves and found in that decision an opportunity to become the agents of their hometown, exhibiting African cultures in a way that was previously forbidden, going “...back and forth in history without interruption, without the permission of the new government or the traditional religious and tribal leaders” (Diawara, 6). Through Sidibe’s lens, every photo developed tells a story of its subject that is tied to the historical action, location, and space of the time. Each photo, upon any glance, has the ability to speak to its viewer.

Malick Sidibe, “Sans Titre” (Untitled), ca. 1960. Courtesy of Magnin-A

Malick Sidibe, “Sans Titre” (Untitled). Courtesy of Magnin-A

More often than not, these photos that relay stories can be found in places as familiar as the family photo album. The first time I came across a photo of my father in Sudan as a young man, it was a portrait of him, with my grandmother, and late aunt that passed after fatal childbirth. My father, twenty or so years old at the time, sits between the two of them in a cream colored polo shirt that stops just above his forearm, his afro haloing his head. On either side of him are two of the women in his life. My grandmother sits furthest right: lips set firm in a tight line, skin a warm, rich mahogany and two thick braids curve out from beneath her tobe. The furthest left is my late aunt in a similar tobe, her hair slicked back into a single braid that falls down the front of her chest and settles against her waist. This photo brought with it several questions for my adolescent self, questions regarding the way Sudanese people experience being racialized and the way our bodies as Africans have had to endure perception, questions of belonging, questions regarding representation and what it means to be represented by the geopolitical space of a nation, a people, and to carry that representation on the body. The photographs in my family photo albums became a means through which I could understand how the body is archived, the bodies of the different people with whom I share ancestry with are archived, and presented me with the tools and capacity to make sense of the in-between space many Sudanese people find themselves operating in.

The history of photography and film in Sudan is one that has long been subjected to repression and censorship at the hands of regimes that seek to control any and all images of the country currently in circulation. Sudan, home to some of Africa’s largest film and photography archives, gained independence from British rule in 1956. Post-independence, the narrative being pushed for by the state was framed as a ‘unifying’ measure, being that whether one was from the North, South, West, or East no longer mattered in a national sense and everyone was Sudanese from that point forward—but this often led to erasure of the lifestyles, beliefs, and identities of those marginalized by the increasingly rigid national identity. Thus, what it meant to be Sudanese from that point forward took on several different meanings, and the conversation about this newly-forming identity began to be explored, particularly from and by the youth, in the photography emerging from that time. Captured in the lenses of photographers and filmmakers like Gadalla Gubara, Fouad Hamza Tibin, Amin Rashid and Mohamed Yahia Issa, to name a few, are pictures of a newly emerging population dictating and forming an identity for themselves: Sudanese, in its collective in-betweenness, its nuances, its failures, its pain and its beauty. In the same breath, it must be acknowledged that these photos, beautiful and evocative of a certain nostalgia that feels most present in the absence of being in diaspora, are representative of only a certain fraction of Sudan’s population, centralized primarily in the country-capital that is Khartoum. Drawing upon the experience of someone who is Sudan-born, diaspora-raised, seeking to understand and form my own understanding of this shared identity, my positionality has made it is easy for me to look upon the tender images captured by these unsung photographers and feel the sort of warmth that can only emerge from a longing to know oneself in community with an estranged collective—acknowledging and assessing both the limitations and possibilities such a position affords is crucial to critically push the ongoing conversation of Sudanese identity formation forward.

Fouad Hamza Tibin, “Untitled”, Courtesy of ELNOUR / Claude Iverne

What has made the preservation and circulation of these images possible are the efforts of photographers, filmmakers, researchers and archivists such as Sara Gadalla, Katharina Von Schroeder, Benjamin Chowkwan Ado, Awad Eldaw, and many countless other cultural caretakers. The archive, a highly discursive space, can mean many things. While the archive cannot “…be the depository of the entire history of a society, of all that has happened in that society…” it does offer a space in which “…we are presented with pieces of time to be assembled, fragments of life to be placed in order, one after the other, in an attempt to formulate a story that acquires its coherence through the ability to craft links between the beginning and the end” (Mbembe, 21). In a country like Sudan, where being able to freely express oneself and exist as a photographer subject to a dictatorial regime poses a problem, it becomes increasingly difficult to choose to remain a practicing artist, to exist in a constant state of repression within one’s own nation-state. Much like the relationship between the state and the photographer, the relationship between the state and the archive suffered. In its capacity to function as an institution of the imaginary, the archive itself maintains a complex relationship to the state, its state. While there is no state without its archives, the very existence of the archive constitutes a constant threat to the state. [1]

In turn, Sudan’s national archives face a familiar and deeply troubled set of issues: severe neglect, poor conditions, and an overwhelming lack of support, funding, or resources from the government to which they belong, issues explored in depth by Suhaib Gasmelbari in his illuminating documentary short “Sudan’s Forgotten Films” (2017). Sudan’s national film and photography archive alone, among the largest in Africa, is home to over 13,000 films and stills. This archive, formerly managed by two elderly archivists and among the remaining experts or guardians of the archive—Benjamin Ado and Awad Aldaw—is home to footage and images of many of Sudan’s pivotal moments: Sudan’s official independence day, Nelson Mandela’s visit to the Sudan, snapshots of a period in Sudanese history when it was amongst the foremost developed nations with free access to healthcare and education, daily flights between Europe and the Americas, and regular but exponentially important portraits of Sudanese people across the nation living their lives as freely as they do now. However, it is in critical danger following years of damaging and poor conditions. Much to the frustration and disappointment of Ado and Aldaw, who dedicated their lives to preserving these artifacts for future generations of Sudanese people, there has been a resounding lack of official support from Sudan’s current administration.[2] Instead, outside institutions—many of whom are European, such as the University of Bergen (financed by the Norwegian embassy)—have taken on the ongoing project of digitising what remains salvageable of the archival materials. Private archives and studios like ELNOUR and Studio Gad (managed and run by Sara Gadalla with assistance from Katharina Von Schroeder) have embarked on the same mission, working to digitise and make available the private archives of prominent yet largely unknown or unacknowledged Sudanese photographers providing as much credit as possible to the photographers and filmmakers for their beautiful and necessary work.

Abbas Habib Alla Abdellateef Abdalla, “Untitled.” Courtesy of ELNOUR / Claude Iverne

These efforts have made it possible for modern, and in many regards successful, attempts at identity formation to take shape amongst contemporary Sudanese youth. There is the visionary female-led collective, Locale—dreamt and founded by the brilliant minds of Aala Sharfi, Qutouf Yahia, Safwa Mohammed, and Rund Alarabi—who exhibit, design, and collaborate with Sudanese artists. Locale is a group whose efforts have made unprecedented and innovative strides in the realm of groundbreaking cultural caretaking. A self-defined Sudanese space for the development and support of a homegrown creative effort, the work Locale has accomplished in the realm of showcasing and uplifting Sudanese artistry and ingenuity exceeds even the most generous expectations for what a platform made for us, by us could look like, and the limitless possibilities such an intentional and empowered cultural ecosystem could possess. The first time I learn of Locale, it is through one of their signature collaborative projects: Hunak, a publication of twelve contributing artists that write and visualize what it means to be in constant movement, or in a state of complete stagnancy, exploring themes of separation, distance, and the worldbuilding necessary to reconcile such a loss. Amongst their many projects, Locale’s most recent and expansive endeavor: “This Will Have Been: Archives of the Past, Present, and Future”, an eight-day event and exhibition that included film screenings, panels, and gallery installations, showcasing never before seen by the public archival materials and footage. Grounded in and born from the belief that forming a cultural identity and holistic understanding of one’s own origin, “This Will Have Been” emerged “…from the possibility to locate, study, and learn from history—for the Sudanese artist the process is not a smooth one.”[3] Addressing issues of accessibility and the archive as a site of action and activation, Locale’s ingenious exhibition examined the archive through three timelines: its past in searching, its present in reclaiming, and means of activating its future. A project like this models what a homegrown effort grounded in the most profound acts of love could look like, and what a desire to claim, then reclaim, and preserve one’s past, present, and future can result in. In an endeavor like that of Locale’s, the individual is engaged as an alchemist of the archive and successor in an ever growing creative lineage.

The Sudan of today is a country beyond a country, one of exploded borders, whose cultural production, creative lineage, and collective cultural identity is being defined in real time by its latest generation of artists and innovators. There is Ahmed Abushakeema, a freelance photographer living in Khartoum, who began a project in which he planned to capture “1000 Portraits From Sudan”. Spurred by the lack of documentation of Sudan’s large and wide range of ethnic and phenotypic diversity, Abushakeema’s ultimate goal of putting on display the many faces of Sudan is in hopes that one’s story, one’s name, is irrelevant so long as they are a part of Sudan in whatever capacity that takes shape. There is self-taught producer and audio painter Sammany Hajo, who in 2017 released his paramount album Briefcase, a collection of beats that sample and fuse the Sudanese Haqeeba songs. Al Haqeeba is a style of music that originated in the 1920s and was influenced by the Sudanese ‘madeeh’ (a sufi practice of praising the Prophet Muhammad [pbuh]). Drawing upon his own experiences as a Sudanese artist raised in diaspora and having grown up listening to aghani al Haqeeba, Hajo bridges past and present to develop an ethereal soundscape that can uniquely be identified to the modern moment. Platforms like that of ElMastaba TV, founded by filmmaker and content creator Idreesy Koum, or sn3sdn صنع في السودان (made in Sudan), founded by brand architects, designers, and artists Abdallah Abbas and Ahmed Shareef, offer examples of what embracing and uplifting creative pursuits by and for Sudanese people can look like. Institutions like MOJO Gallery and the Sudan Film Factory, two major proponents of the arts and cinema based in Khartoum, offer concrete models of what creating from and being in service of a Sudanese center can manifest in: the circulation and acquisition of Sudanese art and film, through channels that respect and honor the formerly undervalued cultural productions of Sudanese artists, artisans and filmmakers. The common ground these modern institutions and creators stand upon is one of courage and regenerative hope. The Sudanese, amongst many things, are purveyors of hope, possessing a seemingly illogical courage. After the release of his critically acclaimed documentary film, “Talking About Trees”, in an interview on this same courage and the resilience of the four filmmakers he tenderly documents, Suhaib Gasmelbari notes: “This courage comes after a lot of fear. When the fear grows very high and you live in a constant state of it, suddenly there is an illogical courage that invades you.”

Abbas Habib Alla Abdellateef Abdalla, “Untitled.” (Self-portrait) Courtesy of ELNOUR / Claude Iverne

On the surface, these digitisation and preservation efforts do a great deal as far as making accessible and available the work of these photographers. Yet, it is the underlying effort and result it produces that shine a highly redeemable light on the work. In preserving portraits captured by a Sudanese lens, a Sudanese gaze, these archivists make it so that the photographs are allowed the space to do for their intended audiences what the photographs of Malick Sidibe did for the Bamakois youth and future generations: identify, critically engage, and reclaim their identity. The photographs continue to speak and engage an ongoing dialogue around what it means to be Sudanese and the many possibilities in what and how Sudanese identity formation can come to be. While the photographers themselves cannot live on, it is the stories, the visual memories safeguarded in their photographs that remain alive: a time in Sudan that, despite every effort being made to blur it from national consciousness, can sharpen into view upon a single glance of any photograph captured through the Sudanese gaze.

Mbembe, Achille. “The Power of the Archive and Its Limits.” Refiguring the Archive. Comp. Carolyn Hamilton. N.p.: Springer, 2002. 19–27. Print. ↩

At the time of this writing, Sudan was formerly under the repressive regime of Omar Al-Bashir’s administration. ↩

Locale. “This Will Have Been: Archives of the Past, Present, and Future.” Localesd.com, 2019, www.localesd.com/project/will-have-been. ↩

Works Cited

+Aj عربي. “السودان وعقدة اللون.” Facebook Watch, عربي +AJ, 27 Dec. 2018, tinyurl.com/sudancolorism.

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Diawara, Manthia. "The Sixties in Bamako: Malick Sidibé and James Brown." (2003): n. pag. Web.

El-Amin, Saria. “Review: ‘This Will Have Been: Archives of the Past Present & Future’ Exhibition by Locale.” 500 Words Magazine, 12 Jan. 2020, 500wordsmag.com/miscellaneous/review-this-will-have-been-archives-of-the-past-present-future-exhibition-by-locale/.

Elhassan, Dalia. “Conversation with Hala Kashif.” 15 Jan. 2020.

Elhillo, Safia. ""asmar", Poetry: Two Poems by Safia Elhillo | Frontier Poetry // A Platform For Emerging Poetry." Frontier Poetry. Frontier Poetry, 23 Aug. 2017. Web.

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May 2020. Vol nº1

The Sudanese Gaze: Visual Memory in Post-Independence Sudan

Power Shots: Ernest Cole and The Role of Apartheid-era Photography