Studio Sawiro
Somalia's encounter with the daguerreotype in the mid-nineteenth century, marks the first conjuncture in its photographic history. In his 1848 ‘Voyage à la Côte Orientale d’Afrique,’ Charles Guillain interweaves geography and ethnography by producing daguerreotype portraits to visualise his encounters with inhabitants along the East African coast of the Indian Ocean, including Somali ports Ras Hafun, home to the ancient proto-Somali city Opone, and Mogadishu. Following an 1847 survey of several cities in the Indian subcontinent, Guillain began his investigations of the Somali coast. According to Guillain, acts of refusal by his female Somali subjects who were unwilling to follow conventional portrait postures dictated by the photographer, disrupted the efficacy of the new visual technology. Their sudden movements exposed the polished copper plates to elevated temperature and particularly luminosity, impacting the final quality of the daguerreotypes. Scholar Tina Campt notes that, ‘reassemblage in dispossession is a quotidian practice through which the dispossessed reconfigure their status as subjects within a field of limited and often compromised resources’. Using a Camptian grammar, SITAAD takes the refusal of Somali women in Guillain's daguerreotype as a point of departure.
A substantial volume of Somalia’s colonial visual archive can be attributed to ethnographers, missionaries and photographers. Held in Rome’s Archive, are visual traces of Somali photographic studios later destroyed or abandoned during the Somali Civil War. The photographs contained in the archive were taken by anthropologist Massimo Squillacciotti during his tenure at the Somali National University in Mogadishu’s School of Anthropology between 1985-90. The little known, and uncirculated collection symbolises a lacuna in studies of African portrait photography. Studio Sawiro seeks to form an intervention within, and beyond the collection by recreating a facade of the Somali photography studios from renderings modelled on Massimo Squillacciotti’s Archive, oral history and field-research in Italy and Somalia.
Organised in three thematic clusters, the project centres on participatory methodologies and the reimagining of archival practices. The project will engage collaborators and the public through experimental workshops, archival essays, architectural sketches, and oral histories. This approach not only preserves Somali photographic histories but also brings them to life for contemporary discourse, challenging colonial legacies and reframing memory production in the present.
© SITAAD Archive
Project team
SITAAD are joined by architectural researcher Jabir Mohamed, who is guiding the project’s spatial tracing of former Somali photo studios.
Jabir Mohamed is an architectural researcher and conservationist focused on preserving at-risk built heritage in the Somali Peninsula. As the founder and director of the RAAD RAAC Foundation & Studio, he leads projects dedicated to restoring cultural sites affected by war, neglect, and climate change. His work integrates architectural research, community-driven restoration, and sustainable design practices. Currently, Mohamed is spearheading a project in collaboration with the Berbera Municipal Government, the Commonwealth Heritage Forum, and the Hargeisa Cultural Centre to restore a historic site in Berbera, including an 18th-century Ottoman mosque and British colonial residencies.
Project iterations
2025.
Encounters with Post-Independence Somali Studio Photography in Three Acts. Talks in Contemporary Art, Ruskin School of Art University of Oxford. (Forthcoming).
2024.
Studio Sawiro: Oral History Letter: Leyla's mother, Hawa S. on the photographic cultures of Mogadiscio. Film, 8 min. © SITAAD Archive
Transmigrating Cassettes
The project was first incubated in the United States through a fellowship undertaken by SITAAD with Soomaal House of Art, the University of Minnesota’s Liberal Arts Engagement Hub and the Immigration History Research Center in 2023. The project’s initial public programme was held at Soomaal House of Art, The Hub (Liberal Arts Engagement Hub, and the Africa Center in NYC.The project is now being incubated in Europe, and has been presented at Afterall, Tate and the Recovery Plan.
© The Recovery Plan
Excerpt of Notes on dark archives: Transforming colonial photographs using alternative analogue processes
Publish date: March 2024
Naima Hassan: During our public programme, you spoke to our audiences about the significance of the hue of a cyanotype resembling the Somali flag. Chemically, this is the result of a photochemical reaction between two iron salts. Why might this be a significant entry point?
Leyla Degan: The association between the colours of the Somali flag and the cyanotype was immediate. Even before starting my photographic series, I had already decided that these colours would reflect this connection. Although the true definition of cyanotype colour is Prussian Blue, which is quite different from the colour of the Somali flag, it inevitably reminds us of the Indian Ocean, which is represented in the Somali flag. Our project heavily relies on this association as a departure point and invitation.
NH: I wanted to visit the works of English botanist and photographer, Anna Atkins. Her seminal book, Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns, was developed through her association with Jamaican plantation economies. Her husband and father-in-law in fact owned eight plantations. As archivists inhabiting the colonial archive, it should not be a surprise that the cyanotype has a colonial foundation. During our public programme, we decided against producing a spectacularised narrative around the troupe. Instead, we committed ourselves to examining the subjectivity of the troupe alongside other communities of performers.
In a future iteration of our public programme series, I would like the cyanotype to be unveiled in a context that reveals its early entanglement with extractive colonialism. There seems to be a not-yet addressed question within the museum field. How are you working with these tensions?
LD: We must keep a close eye on this tension. It would be interesting to explore how the use of this technique can develop into an indigenous practice with new meanings. It is important to consider the historical use and expansion of this technique during the colonial era and how it can be viewed in the present and future. How does photography carry this historical baggage?
NH: During our research, we noticed a Somali Xirsi worn by a young female member of the troupe. Accounts in the troupe’s deportation case file describe how jewellery belonging to female troupe members was vulnerable to confiscation by U.S. immigration officials. I wanted to return to this scene, to speak to Afterall’s Hiding in Plain Sight series. The scholar Simone Browne, draws attention to the modalities between darkness and shadows, and their potential as grounds for ‘speculation, contestation, and possibility.’ This feels like a useful framework for positing questions about the Xirsi, about the limits of provenance methods to trace confiscated jewellery. The photograph in question was taken in a police station in Chicago in 1915, when members of the troupe were arrested. In your cyanotype series, ‘Ilaalin; Waan Ku Ilaalin Doona’ (2023) (figure 3) opacity seems to be present.
Perhaps we can speak about the symbol of the Xirsi across temporalities here? Reading along the borders of these two images, there is both a historical continuity and an introduction of what Tina Campt describes as a “counter-image”. Observing a child, who is unable to consent to participating within the colonial economy of performing exhibitions wearing an amulet of protection raised tensions for us. The child could not be protected in the material sense, but rather spiritually. Why is opacity an important theme in your “counter-image” of the Xirsi?
LD: I am convinced that the Xirsi in this process for us, for those who come into contact with our project and will have the opportunity to experience it through their own eyes and ears, implements a real form of memory protection. For me, the Xirsi activates spiritual memory practices as an engagement with the conceptof Descansos, a Spanish word that means ‘resting places’ as described by Clarissa Pinkola Estés (2012). Through the Xirsi, we can put to images to rest. The Xirsi’s value was once overlooked, but as time passes, its significance is recognized. Our project’s close cultural ties to Somalia, combined with the Xirsi’s growing popularity, make it an important object to explore in our project.
NH: In our investigation of the troupe’s state deportation case file, we were confronted by accounts of jewellery confiscations, performed by US officials who figured that the jewellery the female troupe members adorned themselves with held economic value. On August 25, 1915, a letter details how initial confiscations made troupe members begin to “ship their gold to their native land”. I proposed a provenance-focused intervention around these letters, but there is a limitation here. Robin Gray’s concept of rematration is a helpful starting point for extending the limits of provenance methods. ‘Ilaalin; Waan Ku Ilaalin Doona’ (2023) seems like an attempt to call back intimate knowledges rooted in Somali women’s material cultural expressions.
In Dark Archives (2015) Erica Scourti offers a way of thinking about ‘dark matter’ within archives, namely, information in an archive that cannot be seen. The items of jewellery confiscated by Chicago immigration officials might have been discarded, sold into auction, or ended up in a museum or private collection. The deportation case files acted as ‘dark’ archives we inhabited to trace the troupe’s trajectory in the U.S., despite the tensions involved.
Staying with the dark, I recently encountered a substantial digital photography collection of Somali ethnographic performers documented by Prince Roland Bonaparte at various international exhibitions of the late nineteenth century. The photographs are only accessible on the Quai Branly Museum’s digital collections as negatives. I do not imagine an ethical ‘veiling’ was the intent here, yet this made me contemplate our ongoing conversation on the act of ‘veiling’ colonial photographs. The reader may notice clear intentions with our image selections, for instance.
LD: The role of Xirsi in this story is fundamental, although it is deliberately obscured despite its image marking its presence. It is important to give voice to its need for protection, which acquires additional value in resisting to this day. Even though it lives hidden in the shadows, it highlights several aspects that become fundamental. I want to stress here that for a long time, these photographs were circulated within the Somali community with false representations. The troupe members were presented in some cases as Somali refugees who were welcomed in the U.S. This troubled us as we know that they were detained in Chicago after countless protests and requests for repatriation. This backstory highlights the opaque nature of this ‘dark archive’ deliberately kept hidden. This is where the work we are doing in Transmigrating Cassettes comes into play.
Through the process of reappropriation, the veiled image created through a cyanotype process reveals an element of photography that did not exist before. During the development process, I was able to decide what to show and what not to show. The almost total absence of the faces of the people portrayed highlights precisely this aspect of the question. Our focus is on the reality of these photographs while considering who lives inside the images. Therefore, sometimes, especially in a context of violence and power, it is necessary to stretch a veil that plays as a means of protection, reconnecting once again with the symbolic meaning of Xirsi.
NH: I want to discuss our use of audiocassettes. To think through Hiding in Plain Sight, was there an intention of opacity or subversion here? As we were dealing with a very charged photographic collection, initiating a sonic transmutation of a photographic collection felt like a provocation against the act of witnessing. Why was that important for us?
LD: The use of cassettes has become an integral part of SITAAD’s research process. Although the medium is fragile, it holds a significant place in contemporary Somali culture, especially within the diaspora. Audio cassettes have been used for many years to communicate over long distances, allowing friends, relatives, and acquaintances to have expansive conversations. This is similar to audio messages we send today. Cassettes also played a major role in housing the ‘golden age’ of music in Somalia. By using this medium to access and analyse this photographic collection from various archives, we were able to return a sense of familiarity to the Somali community. This medium evokes a sense of home, security, and trust.
NH: The cassette is a recognisable and familiar technology. We made an intention to only permit community-led circulations of the tapes, rather than via institutions. Retrospectively, I am wondering if there is a life for the cassettes in an ethnographic museum. Perhaps there is a potential in organising ‘listening sessions’ in these locations, and leaving with the tapes?
LD: I hope that these tapes can have a long and generational impact, with the Somali community but also further afield. Ideally, they will continue to disseminate this troupe’s story and its importance on their own. Listening to these tapes will hopefully create environments for generational discussion, where different perspectivescan be put on the table. These tapes should expand to unfamiliar sites, households and spaces of dialogue as part of a migrational path, as the name of our project suggests. As you mentioned, our relationship with institutions is critical, we emphasise the need for public education around colonial contexts.
Read in full on Afterall
Publish date: March 2024
Naima Hassan: During our public programme, you spoke to our audiences about the significance of the hue of a cyanotype resembling the Somali flag. Chemically, this is the result of a photochemical reaction between two iron salts. Why might this be a significant entry point?
Leyla Degan: The association between the colours of the Somali flag and the cyanotype was immediate. Even before starting my photographic series, I had already decided that these colours would reflect this connection. Although the true definition of cyanotype colour is Prussian Blue, which is quite different from the colour of the Somali flag, it inevitably reminds us of the Indian Ocean, which is represented in the Somali flag. Our project heavily relies on this association as a departure point and invitation.
NH: I wanted to visit the works of English botanist and photographer, Anna Atkins. Her seminal book, Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns, was developed through her association with Jamaican plantation economies. Her husband and father-in-law in fact owned eight plantations. As archivists inhabiting the colonial archive, it should not be a surprise that the cyanotype has a colonial foundation. During our public programme, we decided against producing a spectacularised narrative around the troupe. Instead, we committed ourselves to examining the subjectivity of the troupe alongside other communities of performers.
In a future iteration of our public programme series, I would like the cyanotype to be unveiled in a context that reveals its early entanglement with extractive colonialism. There seems to be a not-yet addressed question within the museum field. How are you working with these tensions?
LD: We must keep a close eye on this tension. It would be interesting to explore how the use of this technique can develop into an indigenous practice with new meanings. It is important to consider the historical use and expansion of this technique during the colonial era and how it can be viewed in the present and future. How does photography carry this historical baggage?
NH: During our research, we noticed a Somali Xirsi worn by a young female member of the troupe. Accounts in the troupe’s deportation case file describe how jewellery belonging to female troupe members was vulnerable to confiscation by U.S. immigration officials. I wanted to return to this scene, to speak to Afterall’s Hiding in Plain Sight series. The scholar Simone Browne, draws attention to the modalities between darkness and shadows, and their potential as grounds for ‘speculation, contestation, and possibility.’ This feels like a useful framework for positing questions about the Xirsi, about the limits of provenance methods to trace confiscated jewellery. The photograph in question was taken in a police station in Chicago in 1915, when members of the troupe were arrested. In your cyanotype series, ‘Ilaalin; Waan Ku Ilaalin Doona’ (2023) (figure 3) opacity seems to be present.
Perhaps we can speak about the symbol of the Xirsi across temporalities here? Reading along the borders of these two images, there is both a historical continuity and an introduction of what Tina Campt describes as a “counter-image”. Observing a child, who is unable to consent to participating within the colonial economy of performing exhibitions wearing an amulet of protection raised tensions for us. The child could not be protected in the material sense, but rather spiritually. Why is opacity an important theme in your “counter-image” of the Xirsi?
LD: I am convinced that the Xirsi in this process for us, for those who come into contact with our project and will have the opportunity to experience it through their own eyes and ears, implements a real form of memory protection. For me, the Xirsi activates spiritual memory practices as an engagement with the conceptof Descansos, a Spanish word that means ‘resting places’ as described by Clarissa Pinkola Estés (2012). Through the Xirsi, we can put to images to rest. The Xirsi’s value was once overlooked, but as time passes, its significance is recognized. Our project’s close cultural ties to Somalia, combined with the Xirsi’s growing popularity, make it an important object to explore in our project.
NH: In our investigation of the troupe’s state deportation case file, we were confronted by accounts of jewellery confiscations, performed by US officials who figured that the jewellery the female troupe members adorned themselves with held economic value. On August 25, 1915, a letter details how initial confiscations made troupe members begin to “ship their gold to their native land”. I proposed a provenance-focused intervention around these letters, but there is a limitation here. Robin Gray’s concept of rematration is a helpful starting point for extending the limits of provenance methods. ‘Ilaalin; Waan Ku Ilaalin Doona’ (2023) seems like an attempt to call back intimate knowledges rooted in Somali women’s material cultural expressions.
In Dark Archives (2015) Erica Scourti offers a way of thinking about ‘dark matter’ within archives, namely, information in an archive that cannot be seen. The items of jewellery confiscated by Chicago immigration officials might have been discarded, sold into auction, or ended up in a museum or private collection. The deportation case files acted as ‘dark’ archives we inhabited to trace the troupe’s trajectory in the U.S., despite the tensions involved.
Staying with the dark, I recently encountered a substantial digital photography collection of Somali ethnographic performers documented by Prince Roland Bonaparte at various international exhibitions of the late nineteenth century. The photographs are only accessible on the Quai Branly Museum’s digital collections as negatives. I do not imagine an ethical ‘veiling’ was the intent here, yet this made me contemplate our ongoing conversation on the act of ‘veiling’ colonial photographs. The reader may notice clear intentions with our image selections, for instance.
LD: The role of Xirsi in this story is fundamental, although it is deliberately obscured despite its image marking its presence. It is important to give voice to its need for protection, which acquires additional value in resisting to this day. Even though it lives hidden in the shadows, it highlights several aspects that become fundamental. I want to stress here that for a long time, these photographs were circulated within the Somali community with false representations. The troupe members were presented in some cases as Somali refugees who were welcomed in the U.S. This troubled us as we know that they were detained in Chicago after countless protests and requests for repatriation. This backstory highlights the opaque nature of this ‘dark archive’ deliberately kept hidden. This is where the work we are doing in Transmigrating Cassettes comes into play.
Through the process of reappropriation, the veiled image created through a cyanotype process reveals an element of photography that did not exist before. During the development process, I was able to decide what to show and what not to show. The almost total absence of the faces of the people portrayed highlights precisely this aspect of the question. Our focus is on the reality of these photographs while considering who lives inside the images. Therefore, sometimes, especially in a context of violence and power, it is necessary to stretch a veil that plays as a means of protection, reconnecting once again with the symbolic meaning of Xirsi.
NH: I want to discuss our use of audiocassettes. To think through Hiding in Plain Sight, was there an intention of opacity or subversion here? As we were dealing with a very charged photographic collection, initiating a sonic transmutation of a photographic collection felt like a provocation against the act of witnessing. Why was that important for us?
LD: The use of cassettes has become an integral part of SITAAD’s research process. Although the medium is fragile, it holds a significant place in contemporary Somali culture, especially within the diaspora. Audio cassettes have been used for many years to communicate over long distances, allowing friends, relatives, and acquaintances to have expansive conversations. This is similar to audio messages we send today. Cassettes also played a major role in housing the ‘golden age’ of music in Somalia. By using this medium to access and analyse this photographic collection from various archives, we were able to return a sense of familiarity to the Somali community. This medium evokes a sense of home, security, and trust.
NH: The cassette is a recognisable and familiar technology. We made an intention to only permit community-led circulations of the tapes, rather than via institutions. Retrospectively, I am wondering if there is a life for the cassettes in an ethnographic museum. Perhaps there is a potential in organising ‘listening sessions’ in these locations, and leaving with the tapes?
LD: I hope that these tapes can have a long and generational impact, with the Somali community but also further afield. Ideally, they will continue to disseminate this troupe’s story and its importance on their own. Listening to these tapes will hopefully create environments for generational discussion, where different perspectivescan be put on the table. These tapes should expand to unfamiliar sites, households and spaces of dialogue as part of a migrational path, as the name of our project suggests. As you mentioned, our relationship with institutions is critical, we emphasise the need for public education around colonial contexts.
Read in full on Afterall
Transmigrating Cassettes © SITAAD Archive
Footnotes
- A cyanotype is a cameraless printing formulation that involves laying a photographic print on a piece of plain (uncoated) paper, on which the image is composed of a blue pigment. The paper is sensitised with ferric (iron) salts. A yellow-brown image prints out during the exposure to the light. During the subsequent washing and drying, the image intensifies and is converted to a prussian blue pigment. See Lavédrine 2009.
- The National Archives and Records Administration: Barnum & Bailey 53939-36b case files cover various issues concerning the troupe’s activities in the United States, including labour agreements with Barnum & Bailey contractors and legal correspondences, and later their deportations, arrests and their stays in detainee centres. The files also include several correspondences between government officials and Barnum Bailey contractors, along with testimonies. A finding aid was created to support the Transmigrating Cassettes Public Programme in Minneapolis, held at the University of Minnesota and Soomaal House. SITAAD worked with archive intern Hodan Hassan to produce finding aid.
- “Descansos, resting places. You’ll also find them on the edges of cliffs along particularly scenic but dangerous roads in Greece, Italy, and other Mediterranean countries. Sometimes crosses are clustered in twos or threes or fives. People’s names are inscribed upon them, sometimes the names are spelled out in nails, sometimes they’re painted on the wood or carved into it […] To make descansos means taking a look at your life and marking where the small deaths, las muertes, chiquitas, and the big deaths, las muertes grandotas, have taken place. […] I encourage you to make descansos, to sit down with a time-line of your life and say “where are the places that must be remembered and blessed?”, Clarissa Pinkola Estés.
- See IX Somalis [Portrait of a seated man, bust, with the body in three-quarter view and the head in profile] Prince Roland Bonaparte (1858 – 1924), Gelatin-silver bromide negative on glass plate. Quai Branly Museum Digital Collection.
SITAAD Archive
SITAAD Archive is a repository of writings, gatherings, public programmes and exhibition presentations collected with the aim of pluralising forms of research and study on Somali collections.
Leyla Degan © SITAAD Archive