I find pretend toys based on instruments or devices – a guitar with no strings, a wooden computer – quite fascinating as a concept. What I like about this toy camera from Ségou (Mali) c. 2009 (now at the Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden) is that it includes many little details and clearly required a complex folding design, and a wide variety of materials that were expertly and confidently put to good use.
The text provided by the museum states that this sort of object reveals serious global issues, highlighting the waste that is accumulating all over Africa, dumped by richer countries and destroying the environment. It also remarks on how many African families rely on recycling materials to earn a living, sometimes creating interesting works with tin cans and the like, which it states are not used as toys by locals but rather sold in the markets to travellers and tourists.
While all this is important and necessary to keep in mind, having searched for different examples of toys across Africa over the last few months, I wonder whether we sometimes fall into the trap of solely focusing on the context in which playthings such as these were created. This is likely due to an understandable effort to increase our awareness about very evident problems of inequality and inequity in the world, but it has occurred to me that we may be reducing them to being exemplifiers of problems a little too often.
Put another way, I wonder whether we sometimes rob objects from certain places of real complexity and richness, and the chance to (also) embody things other than ‘issues’ of a particular nature. This camera may indeed be a good reflection of the abuse of developing countries by rich countries, which use the former as dumping grounds for their waste (and as sites for polluting industries, and a very long list of other things), but it was not created in a vacuum, and contains other dimensions that are worth thinking about as well.
If we knew nothing about where it came from, or if someone told us this was made by someone in a middle class area in Tokyo, what questions would we be asking about it? And what would it make us think about?
Despite the comment about these toys not being used by locals (perhaps this particular one was made for tourists), there is a long tradition of making toys out of wires, cans, and other recycled materials in different countries across Africa, many of which are used by children.
The Chichewa word galimoto refers to a push along toy car or vehicle, and probably derives from the English words motor car (car motor in reverse order). It is used in different areas in Africa to refer to handmade wire push along toys, which are very common.
They can go from very simple affairs to quite complicated objects like this wire toy at the British Museum. It shows musicians on a vehicle of some sort, and is possibly my favourite of the several in storage at the museum. I was interested in the hats they are all wearing, and liked that the maker had used the same pattern to give them unity as a band [I worked out that they had used cartons of local beer Chibuku Shake Shake], and the fact that it says “New Design 1990” on the front. The British Museum has a little collection of several of these wire toys from Malawi, all of which seem to be in storage.
When I wrote about this project and the seed for it all, Shoe Doll, I realised that I was taken with the doll not because she represented the tragedy of a girl living in poverty, but because she was a good example of what constitutes a good plaything – a manifestation of possibility.
There is a lot of that here; these recycled toys are often an explosion of colourful product packaging, reinvented and given new purpose. They offer many lanes to pursue, often all at once -- humour, social/political commentary, or pure design and beauty. And of course, there are many instances in which the line between play and art blurs in a satisfying way.
The strawberries on this camera brought to mind a time when I was little when I was very taken with a red plastic bag from a relatively upmarket clothing shop. I thought it was a delicious tone of red, and felt that the overall design was wonderful. My sister and I tried to coordinate our room to match the bag, which we filled with something (paper?) so it would stand up on its own, and leant against a table. We covered different bits of the room in a sort of red wrapping paper in an attempt to match it to the bag, and acted a little like human magpies busily building our nest.
Perhaps this camera appeals to that human magpie instinct of collecting attractive patterns and making good use of them. Packaging with photographs of luscious strawberries on it is too precious to not repurpose, and a camera seems like the perfect thing to use it on. A great many details could have been omitted and it would still be a lovely object, but whoever made it made sure it was as complete and as fun as possible. I’m curious to know whether one can wind it in any way, and whether it feels nice and smooth when you do it.
I also thought a bit about what a real camera does, capturing a moment in time. When we “play” at taking a photograph, do we try to capture the moment in our mind, or are we just concerned with pressing the button? With analogue cameras, we have to choose a moment and frame it; there is a choice to be made. It made me think about how differently images are processed now, and how children are used to seeing images on a loop constantly, watching and rewatching from when they are infants. I wonder whether their concept of time changes as a result?
My little rabbithole this week was provided by photographer Martha Cooper – now perhaps best known for her photography of graffiti, street art and hip hop – sparked by the photographica collection held at the Museum of Play (The Strong). I loved finding out about her introduction to the world of photography at the tender age of 3, when her father gave her a Kodak Baby Brownie camera. Later on, during the late seventies and early eighties, she photographed unsupervised children playing in poor neighbourhoods in New York, which were compiled into the book Street Play in 2006. A selection of 20 of them were acquired a few years ago by the Museum of the City of New York, some of which you can see here. Looking through them now, some of them give me the same feel as Maurice Sendak’s The Sign on Rosie’s Door, in that they capture the freedom of playing, whiling away long hours outdoors, and coming up with new things to do.
It was interesting to think of this particular toy as a possible candidate for Cooper’s collection of toy cameras at The Museum of Play.
I look at this camera and think to myself that the winding system is asking to be fiddled with, our face contorted into a professional frown, before pointing the lens at our chosen subject. Say cheese.