SANDRINE COLARD
Assistant Professor of African Art History,
Rutgers University, Newark

USC-LACMA History of Photography Seminar

DATE CHANGE ANNOUNCEMENT: This event will take place on Wednesday, October 11.

In the wake of World War II, the colonial administration of the Belgian Congo accelerated the production of a permanent photographic service, the Centre d’information et de documentation (CID-InforCongo), which quasi centralized and monopolized all public photographic representations of the Congo for the national and international press, literature and exhibitions. These images became increasingly destined for an African viewership: the hiring of a Congolese photographer, Joseph Makula, as well as the creation of Nos Images, an illustrated magazine published in Ciluba, Swahili and Lingala, strove to tame the rise of independence movements. By concentrating on the alleged rise of a congenial “Belgian-Congolese community” through an iconography of kinship, this presentation examines the post-war colonial and African photography at the intersection of two usually antagonistic impulses: imperial propaganda and black modern self-imaging.