Thread by @DFoliard

My book “The Violence of Colonial Photography” publ. by @ManchesterUP is out

https://twitter.com/ManchesterUP/status/1593230988397903872

. It is, in many ways, an extensive caption for the photo reproduced on its cover. A thread on this image, and the book. This print is held by Marguerite Durand library (Paris).

1/It was shot in the early 1890s in the French Sudan (Mali) by Raymonde Bonnetain who liked to experiment with the camera. She traveled with Paul Bonnetain, her husband, a colonial administrator. The girl in the picture is her daughter Renée, in her early teens.

2/Renée is wearing an immaculate white dress, a human skull on her lap, 12 others are placed around her. This bizarre image makes no sense on its own, in isolation. Its visual contents say nothing about what is going on here. It is even impossible to locate it at first glance.

3/Deep primary research allowed me to find views showing the same site. The photograph was taken in Kayes (Mali) in the garden of a French army veterinarian named Henri Sarrazin. He participated in the French conquest of Africa and fought against Samory Touré in the early 1890s.

4/On the back of the photo, a handwritten note reads: “Mlle Renée Bonnetain playing with the skulls of Samory’s sofas shot in the outre-Niger region, after some pointless battles, for the greater glory & profit of the marine artillery”. This was more than just cold irony

5/Extreme violence that characterized French expansion in the area. It is one of the few surviving records directly documenting this. Raymonde, who expressed deep racism in her account of her 1st trip to the area, seems to have taken this photo to subvert the official narrative

6/Both Paul and her took other incriminating photos, but none of them became public. L. Archinard, the French commander in the area, did all he could to avoid such information from spreading

7/In France, a copy of the photograph was given to Marguerite Durand, early French feminist (and close to Paul and Raymonde). Influential people knew about the violence it captures and chose to keep it a secret

8/Sarrazin probably collected the remains. I wrote “probably” in the 📕, but I’ve recently located an album with his portrait and a photo of approx. 13 captives. Sarrazin published a book on the “Races of the Sudan” years later. This image is not an anomaly: it is a nodal point

9/These human remains likely belong to Samory’s soldiers. I could not name them, but we know they fought the French. That is why this picture exists, because of resistance. It is also a grim reflection of how racialized violence permeated colonialism.

10/Like other photographs, I decided to include it because it already has had several afterlives these last years both in Mali and Senegal. The desecrating power of such images has been denied locally, as illustrated by recent uses of Samory’s portraits after his capture

11/While acknowledging how the recirculation of visual violence might replicate power dynamics, the book is a suggestion on how to study the topic without enabling other replications: that of colonial erasures and that of the 19th-c. consecration of their power on the colonized

12/You can read @KimAtiWagner’s (great and freely available) preface to the book on this issue ocean.exacteditions.com/issues/102519/…

13/This book is about choosing to look at what might often be considered unimaginable: the most violent expressions of European colonial expansion (1890s-1910s). Many of the difficult images analyzed and reproduced in the book were filtered out from imperial narratives

14/“Monograph” hardly applies to works like these. I was lucky to exchange with far more people than a few tweet can do justice to. Important additions were made to this new edition thanks to the help of @pathisanyathi. I cannot thank him enough for his time and expertise

15/The translation itself was a multi-authored endeavor involving Cadenza Academic Translations, Martha Evonuk, Saskia Brown and yours truly for half of the book. Alun Richards’s careful editing was key. Alan Rutter’s indexing powers salvatory.

16/This edition and the research behind it were funded by @CreaNanterre, @LarcaParis, Labex #ArTeC and #Idex @univ_paris_cite. I am very thankful for their combined support and @ManchesterUP dedication which made this book as accessible as possible.

17/If you’re around Paris on Dec.9, do register for the book launch @ eventbrite.com/e/billets-book…. I will also be talking about the book (online) with @ProtschkySusie on Dec. 13: global19c.com/event-details/…. End.