The Photography of J. A. Green

Depicting power and its associative emotions, J. A. Green’s catalogue speaks to the function of history.

Written by Emmanuel Esomnofu

Nov 3, 2024

Collage by THE REPUBLIC. JONATHAN A. GREEN / BRITISH MUSEUM.

For the fourteen years he worked, Jonathan Adagogo Green, more commonly known by his initials, J. A. Green, considered himself an ‘artist photographer.’ His skills of composition necessitated this tag—skills which, it must be said, was quite distinct considering the era in which Green operated: mostly in the last decade of the 19th century. The discipline in his oeuvre is quite visible but for almost a century, the dominant influence in the lingering gaze of his photography went unnoticed. Indeed, it was only recently brought to the light that this curator of some of Nigeria’s longest-surviving anthropological images is in fact a black man. This changes almost everything we know about those images.

In the 19th century, Europe pushed to control the economic prospects of Africa. Following the 1885 scramble chaired by the German vice-chancellor Otto Von Bismark, it was clear that the British had registered major colonial presence in West Africa. Fair to say, the ‘acquisition’ and administration of these parts had violence as vehicle. In Nigeria particularly, the British mission took off, almost concurrently, in two important parts of the country: the coastal Lagos area and the south, where trade relations had been established after the dissolution of the slave trade, otherwise prosperous in the region. The area around Onitsha and the Niger Delta were areas of intense British activity, and their need to document the events of their colonialist movement, brought into these areas the imagistic tool of the camera which had begun taking off in Europe in that same period.

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About the Author

Emmanuel Esomnofu

is a culture journalist, media consultant and creative strategist. His works have appeared in OkayAfrica, NATIVE Mag, Open Country Magazine and Reader's Digest UK.

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The Photography of J. A. Green