Unfixed : photography and decolonial imagination in West Africa In Unfixed Jennifer Bajorek traces the relationship between photography and decolonial political imagination in Francophone West Africa in the years immediately leading up to and following independence from French colonial rule in 1960. Focusing on images created by photographers based in Senegal and Benin Bajorek draws on formal analyses of images and ethnographic fieldwork with photographers to show how photography not only reflected but also actively contributed to social and political change. The proliferation of photographic imagery through studio portraiture bureaucratic ID cards political reportage and photojournalism magazines and more provided the means for west Africans to express their experiences shape public and political discourse and reimagine their world. In delineating how west Africans embrace of photography was associated with and helped spur the democratization of political participation and the development of labor and liberation movements Bajorek tells a new history of photography in west Africa one that theorizes photographys capacity for doing decolonial work Introduction: At least two histories of liberation From early days to Kodak swag West African avant gardes Photography and decolonial imagination Note on geography spelling and language Part 1. What makes a popular photography Ch. 1: Ça bousculait! (It was happening!) Early luminaries Numbers of prints darkroom schedules the interval Whats in an angle Vaccinostyl(e) Economic thresholds Methodological reflection: Where is photographys field Ch. 2: Wild circulation: photography as urban media From Saint Louis with love Vernacular cosmopolitanism and media infrastructure They did it by photo Tinkers tailors: towards an expanded intermediality Undoing the colonial backdrop The road to Ouidah and the moon Ch. 3: Decolonizing print culture: the example of Bingo Paris on the front page Africa on the cover Politics anti politics of representation Towards a transcolonial visual public Independence pan Africanism and consumer marketing Know your African leaders Part 2. Republic of images Ch. 4: Africanizing political photography Censorship political and other Protectionism and colonial markets State formation and the documentary impulse Aspirational research Proto political images Methodological reflection: Endangered archives in the postcolony Ch. 5: The pleasures of state sponsored photography The citizen stops for a moment The gift of electric light late at night Two ears six copies Not everyone was happy Bureaucratic inspiration Heterogeneous visualities and the ideal image Ch. 6: African futures lost and found Federation and non alignment Visual histories under pressure Stirring it up (threats and promises).