From the 1840s on, European photographers traveled all over the world looking for exotic subjects, and people in the places they visited enthusiastically adopted the new medium for themselves. West Africa was one such locale. “In and Out of the Studio : Photographic Portraits from West Africa,” now open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, presents nearly 80 pieces dating from the 1870s to the 1970s by professional and amateur photographers living and working in a region bordered by Senegal and Mali in the northwest and Cameroon and Gabon in the southeast.

Many of the prints, postcards and negatives on view have never been exhibited before. They include self-portraits, staged scenes with painted or actual landscape backgrounds and casual snapshots. With works by famous artists like Seydou Keïta, J. D. ’Okhai Ojeikere and Samuel Fosso shown along with pictures by less-well-known practitioners like George A. G. Lutterodt, the Lisk-Carew Brothers and Alex A. Acolatse, the exhibition promises to reveal a significant chapter in the modernization of Africa. (Through Jan. 3, metmuseum.org.)