Narrative from an Old Photograph: How Absences Make the Story and Inspire Research on Craft Apprenticeship in Benin

Abstract

Generally, photographs are used in anthropology as documentary artefacts to support external narratives or as visual representations of situations or events from the past. Using photographs allows researchers to explore and describe situations, recreate images, and illustrate anthropological discourses within a field of research. Reconstructing the context in which an image was taken gives the picture an extra dimension that can be related to many topics. In my case, orphans, kinship fostering, schooling, and craft apprenticeship are the topics that frame my analysis of a twenty-four-year-old family photograph. The story behind this specific photograph informed my research on craft apprenticeship. The story was told by a childhood friend who was absent from this family photograph because he was forced, on the very day the photograph was taken, to start an apprenticeship as welder.