On the contrary, Green’s photographs of women reveal anything but strength. They contribute towards a conflicting repertoire of femininity, half-shrouded in traditional ideals and half-covered by capitalism, even at so early a time in the 20th century. Martha G. Anderson and Lisa L. Aronson, in their 2021 paper ‘Jonathan A. Green: An African Photographer Hiding in Plain Sight’, perceive his images of women in a cultural light. They write that ‘most of Green’s images that prominently feature African women—or at least those found in Western archives—commemorate, or at least document, female initiation.’  

Might it also have been a cultural manifestation that women seldom achieved independence in his photographs? The figure of a man is always nearby, some touch it seems, to introduce legitimacy. This might have also been so because (rich) men frequently commissioned the photographs Green took, and what better way to please one’s clientele than showcase their wealth? Inferring that women might have been viewed as appendages to a man’s possession indeed disturbs one, especially with just Green’s photographs to go with. He, after all, favoured a documentarist’s gaze. Lingering on essential notions of self and society wasn’t what he did. But rather working, from inside out, big questions which had hitherto been considered small, insignificant, such as the weight of familial burden, especially in the absence of the men.  

We say the men are absent just after saying they are always present in pictures depicting women. This is to infer something beyond looming, ideological presence and considers rather physical presence. Green’s men were often political figures, and in looking at the beleaguered faces of some of the women they took photographs with, we feel deeply some of the latter’s inadequacy. In one, a chief—we know this because of his regal outfit—poses with eight women. Of them all, there’s none smiling. Not even a smirk; the importance of this activity transcends documentation. It’s possible that they thought it reflected on the man’s political standing—this documentary activity of seeming importance.  

The Indiana University Press would, in 2017, publish a book of Green’s photographs curated by Anderson and Aronson, titled African Photographer J. A. Green: Reimagining the Indigenous and the Colonial, with contributions from Christraud M. Geary, Tam Fiofori and Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa. Another of the photographs, titled A Native Chief and His Wives, showcases a cluster of women. Of varying ages and sizes, it’s hard to place if, perhaps, the titular chief had some of his semi-grown children included in the collection. Their nudity contrasts with his fully clothed self, both arms criss-crossed around his chest. It is they who make the photograph stand out, but because of the commonality of their femininity, each of them blurs into one person. And the chief takes the centre stage, literally and figuratively.  

The least-revealing of the photos found in Anderson and Aronson’s paper reveals the most about Green’s partly financial motivation for some of his photographs. It features four women and two kids clinging to the thighs of women who are presumably their mothers; they are weaving baskets and the children watch them, with atypical wide-eyed curiosity. Wrapped in fine textile, all of them, there’s a sensitivity and innocence the photograph propels. It’s a downplayed departure from the other photos, a change the art history professors ascribe thus:  

Christian missions often produce images of this type as propaganda. Sometimes paired with ‘before’ photos in which semi-nude bodies signify ‘heathens’ in need of salvation, images of modestly clothed women typically indicate conversion to Christianity, accompanied by the adoption of a more desirable lifestyle. European audiences may have read this image that way, but Green probably produced it and a number of similar scenes for an altogether different purpose—to accompany artifacts Europeans were purchasing for export. These photographs illustrate local crafts and industries like weaving here, palm oil production, and blacksmithing, or depict local rituals.   

The writer, Jindu Enugbe, believes that the people Green photographed contributed mostly to the tone of the images; it wasn’t an artistic choice as much as it was a subtle emotional response frozen in the permanence of a photograph. ‘I think it’s rather in the dispositions of the persons he’s photographing,’ Jindu says. ‘For example, when he snaps royalties, there is a particular way we expect royalties to constitute themselves. Like that famous picture of Ovonramwen, if you look at the guards behind him, they are depicted as who they are; their status in the society is obvious. But Ovonramwen is Ovonramwen; he is royalty and you could tell just from looking at the picture.’