An African Looks at America: Picturing Racial Integration for Africa, 1956–68
Citation
Newbury, Darren. “An African Looks at America: Picturing Racial Integration for Africa, 1956–68.” History of Photography 47, no. 3 (2024): 269–297. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2024.2323310. Published online 19 March 2024.
Tier justification
Tier 2: peer-reviewed article in History of Photography (Taylor & Francis / Routledge), listed as an acceptable Tier-2 journal in CREDIBILITY.md. Author is the leading UK-based scholar of USIA visual diplomacy in Africa and South African photography history (University of Brighton).
Relevance
The article directly addresses the USIA’s photographic diplomacy program for Africa — the same institutional apparatus responsible for The Family of Man’s Johannesburg stop (30 August – 13 September 1958). The article’s stated argument, as described in WebSearch results returning the Tandfonline abstract (2026-04-30), is that the USIA developed “an extensive programme of photographic diplomacy” during the late 1950s and early 1960s, in which “racial integration became a pervasive theme in the agency’s photographic output as it sought to picture America for its international audiences and visually refute accusations that the USA was an inherently racist society.” The chronological window (1956–1968) brackets the Johannesburg stop on both sides.
The article’s title echoes the perspective-inversion the project needs: not how America presented the world to itself (which is what The Family of Man did), but how America’s photographic output was received by African audiences operating under apartheid and colonial rule. A show whose humanist-universalist argument claimed to transcend race arrived in a city governed by laws whose entire premise was the legal codification of race — and was promoted by the USIA, which was simultaneously producing racially calibrated photographic diplomacy for African audiences.
Key excerpts / pages
- Page range: 269–297 (confirmed by WebSearch result, 2026-04-30, citing Tandfonline bibliographic record).
- The article is described in search results as revealing “an extensive programme of photographic diplomacy developed by the USIA during the late 1950s and early 1960s, largely overlooked by photographic scholarship.”
- Full text is paywalled at Taylor & Francis. Abstract page confirmed at DOI URL. No body-text quotations recorded this round.
- The University of Brighton institutional repository page for this article was confirmed by WebSearch (research.brighton.ac.uk/en/publications/an-african-looks-at-america-picturing-racial-integration-for-afri/); WebFetch to that URL was denied.
Notes
- Full text NOT consulted this round. No page-specific quotations recorded. Body text paywalled.
- The article is the journal-article companion to Newbury’s 2024 Penn State monograph (
src-newbury-2024-cold-war-photographic-diplomacy). The two should be read together; the article may contain more focused discussion of the specific African venues and time-windows covered by the book. - Open question the article may resolve: Did any USIA photographic-diplomacy programme specifically target South Africa or the Johannesburg audience around or after the 1958 FoM stop? The article’s chronological window (1956–68) and geographic scope (Africa) would place this squarely in scope.
- Cross-reference:
src-newbury-2024-cold-war-photographic-diplomacy(full monograph);src-newbury-2023-cole-cold-war-camera(Cole chapter on USIA Johannesburg office);src-sa-press-1958-johannesburg-access-barrier;src-drum-1958-access-barrier. - Cross-reference to
src-sandeen-1995: Sandeen 1995’s “The family of man on the move” chapter deals with the same USIA-commissioned international tour. Newbury’s article supplements Sandeen from a non-US, African-audience perspective. verified: false: Article confirmed to exist (DOI live, Tandfonline bibliographic record returned, Brighton repository listing confirmed); full text not fetched.