Untitled (44UN-8011-469), Tanganyika (Tanzania), 1958
Todd Webb
Archival pigment print
Courtesy of the Todd Webb Archive L2020.85.42
Not on View
Webb’s photographs throughout the U.N. assignment, such as this one of a man mowing grass behind a chain-link enclosure at an electric transfer station in Tanganyika (Tanzania), contradict romantic, mythologized notions of the continent, depicting instead the large-scale industry he was commissioned to capture. Here, the metal fencing creates a literal barrier between photographer and subject. It also implicates the viewer in this power dynamic, in which consent by the subject remains ambiguous.
Image: In Copyright. Courtesy of the Todd Webb Archive