Jacques Toussele was a Cameroonian photographer from Bamessingué near

Mbouda Mbouda is the capital of the Bamboutos department of West Province, Cameroon. Projected to be the fourteenth fastest growing city on the African continent between 2020 and 2025, with a 5.16% growth. Notable people born in Mbouda * (Gi ...

in the Western Region of

Cameroon Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west- central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; th ...

. There are several variant spelling of his

Bamiléké The Bamileke are a Central African people who inhabit the Western High Plateau of Cameroon. Languages The Bamileke languages belong to the Grassfields branch of the Niger-Congo language family, which is sometimes labeled as a " Bantuoid lang ...

name: Toussile, Tousellé, Tousselle and Touselle are all attested. The spelling on his identity card is Toussele without an accent (but pronounced in the French fashion , phonetically us sεlε. When his work was exhibited at the

Pitt Rivers Museum Pitt Rivers Museum is a museum displaying the archaeological and anthropological collections of the University of Oxford in England. The museum is located to the east of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and can only be accessed ...

, an accented variant of his name was used.

Early life

Jacques Toussele was born in 1939 at Bamensingue.

Career

The first Mbouda-born photographer working in Mbouda, he was taught photography by a Nigerian-born photographer. He worked in Bamenda at the height of the

troubles The Troubles ( ga, Na Trioblóidí) were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is sometimes described as an " ...

but then returned to Mbouda where he worked since mid 1960s until his eventual retirement in the early 2000s. He died in

Douala Douala is the largest city in Cameroon and its economic capital. It is also the capital of Cameroon's Littoral Region. Home to Central Africa's largest port and its major international airport, Douala International Airport (DLA), it is the comm ...

on Friday 30 June 2017.

Notable achievements

His work is in the collection of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 F ...

and

Carleton College Carleton College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota. Founded in 1866, it had 2,105 undergraduate students and 269 faculty members in fall 2016. The 200-acre main campus is between Northfield and the 800-acre Cowlin ...

and is included in an exhibition at the

Fowler Museum The Fowler Museum at UCLA, commonly known as The Fowler, and formerly Museum of Cultural History and Fowler Museum of Cultural History, is a museum on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) which explores art and material ...

, Los Angeles opening late 2017. A small exhibition of his work was held at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford curated by Philip Grover & Chris Morton "Studio Cameroon: the everyday photography of Jacques Toussellé". 9 Nov 2007–29 July 2008. His work was the subject of a major archiving project as part of the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the Briti ...

’s Endangered Archive Programme. Scanned copies of his work is available online via the BL link. His work is included in a major exhibition at the

Fowler Museum at UCLA The Fowler Museum at UCLA, commonly known as The Fowler, and formerly Museum of Cultural History and Fowler Museum of Cultural History, is a museum on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) which explores art and material ...

in the second half of 2021: See https://www.fowler.ucla.edu/exhibitions/photo-cameroon/.

Examples

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Toussele, Jacques 1939 births Cameroonian photographers 2017 deaths