Untitled (44UN-7907-149), Somaliland (Somalia), 1958
Todd Webb
Archival pigment print
Courtesy of the Todd Webb Archive L2020.85.38
Not on View
The United Nations’ desire to document industry brought Webb to factories such as this one in Somalia. At the time, Somaliland was under Italian administration as part of a U.N. trusteeship. As Somali poet and scholar Ali Jimale Ahmed suggested: “The United Nations, no doubt, wanted to showcase its operations there, and to document its successes in helping the country achieve quantifiable progress in all sectors: human, social, and economic.” In this photograph, Webb offers his own view of a factory employee running the machinery of industry.
Image: In Copyright. Courtesy of the Todd Webb Archive