The aim of this colloquium is to highlight the histories of photography generated during the processes of decolonization, while rethinking methodological and aesthetic approaches to the medium that are still too Western-centric. What has happened to the production and circulation of photographers and their images since the independence struggles? How did new iconographies, new aesthetics and, with them, new networks of visual exchange develop, complicating the one-sided visibilities and photographic circulations from the “South” to the “North” established during the colonial periods?

Colloque organisé par Gaëlle Prodhon (InVisu/INHA) avec l’aide de l’équipe InVisu et de l’équipe des manifestations scientifiques de l’INHA

Presentation

It’s a well-known fact that the history of photography as a discipline has for the most part been constructed as that of “Western” photography, more specifically that of Europe and the United States. Between the introduction of so-called “extra-Western” photographers on the contemporary art market since the 1990s and the numerous works on the history of the medium during colonial periods, there is still a lack of information on the history of photography from the liberation and independence struggles onwards, from a global and transnational perspective, across all geographical zones. The aim of this colloquium is to highlight the histories of photography generated during the processes of decolonization, while rethinking methodological and aesthetic approaches to the medium that are still too Western-centric. What has happened to the production and circulation of photographers and their images since the independence struggles? How did new iconographies, new aesthetics and, with them, new networks of visual exchange develop, complicating the one-sided visibilities and photographic circulations from the “South” to the “North” established during the colonial periods?

Programm

Journée 1 | Day 1 20 mai 2025

9h00 : Accueil | Welcome

9h15-9h30 : Introduction

Panel 1 | La photographie, arme d’émancipation / Photography as a weapon of emancipation

• 9h30 Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn (artist, PhD candidate in Art, Technology and Design at Konstfack and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden) Les chambres noires de la défiance : le rôle des studios photographiques vietnamiens dans la résistance coloniale
• 10h 05 Emilia Epštajn (on line) (curator at the Museum of African Art, Belgrade, Serbia) Zdravko Pečar’s Testimonies of  Algeria’s Liberation Struggle in the MAU Photo Archive

10 h 40 Table ronde Algeria

• avec Chaouki Adjali (auteur et ayantdroits du fonds privé du photographe Boubakeur Adjali),
• Adel Ben Bella (PhD candidate in Modern Culture and Media, Brown University, US),
• Gaëlle Prodhon (InVisu/INHA/Paris-Nanterre),
• Awel Haouati (EHESS, Centre Maurice Halbwachs),
• Rym Khene (autrice, photographe et éditrice)
• Djamel Farès (photographe) autour des photographes et des images de l’Algérie à partir de sa guerre d’indépendance / around photographers and images of Algeria from its war of independence onwards

11 h 40 : Discussion

12h00-13h30 : Déjeuner

Panel 2 | La photographie, arme d’émancipation : supports, matériels photographiques / Photography, a weapon of emancipation : Supports, photographic materials

• 13h30 Kevin Hong (PhD candidate, History of Art, Yale University, US) “It’s capture the world at all costs”: Polaroid’s Identification System, South African Apartheid, and the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement
• 14h05 Georgia Nasseh (junior research fellow, University of Cambridge, UK) Identifying the Enemy: The Role of the Photobook in Pre- and PostIndependence Angola, 1965–1985
• 14h40 Ben Krewinkel (professor of Photography at the Institute for Media at the School of Journalism, Utrecht,  Netherlands) Birth and Progress of the African Nation State Visualized in Photobooks

15h15 Discussion

15h30 Pause / Break

Panel 3 | Imagination politique et de construction visuelle des récits nationaux / Political imagination and the visual construction of national narratives

• 16 h 00 Margaux Lavernhe (doctorante EHESS CRAL) Photographie et performances de la nation ghanéenne : iconographies et contre-iconographies du nkrumahisme (années 1950-60)
• 16h35 Thy Phu (professor of Race, Diaspora, and Visual Justice at the University of Toronto, Canada) Coloring the Future: Vietnam Pictorial’s Revolutionary Politics of Aesthetics
• 17h10 Stephanie Benzaquen-Gautier (visual historian and research fellow at the International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS) in Leiden, Netherlands),  Republican Bodies: Picturing Political Imaginary in Cambodia in the 1970s

17 h 45 Discussion

Modération : Sonia Voss (commissaire d’exposition) & Marian Nur Goni (MCF  Paris 8)

Journée 2 | Day 2 21 mai 2025

9 h 15-9h30 : Introduction

Panel 4 | Histoires des formations et circulations internationales des photographes et des images : nouvelles cartographies et imaginaires pendant la Guerre froide / Histories of training and international circulation of photographers and  images: new cartographies and imaginaries during the Cold War

• 9h30 Darren Newbury (professor of Photographic History, University of Brighton, UK) Picturing a World after Empire: UNESCO Poster Sets, 1950-70
• 10h05 Paula Barreiro López (professeure d’histoire de l’art contemporain à l’université Toulouse JeanJaurès, FRAMESPA, et directrice de la plateforme de recherche internationale MoDe(s) - Modernité(s) Décentralisée(s) Contre-visualités tricontinentales: photographie, photomontage et communication visuelle
• 1 h40 Oksana Sarkisova (research fellow at OSA Archivum and head of Visual Studies Platform at Central European University, Vienna,  Austria) & Olga Shevchenko (professor in Social Studies in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Williams  College, Massachusetts, US) Double Take: Official and Vernacular Photographs of the Soviet Engagement in Postcolonial Global South 
• 11h15 Sasha Artamonova (PhD candidate, Department of Art  History, Northwestern University /  EHESS) Reimagining the Socialist Photo  Aesthetic for African Liberations: Training of African Photographers at the “Schule der Solidarität” in East Berlin, 1963-1979

11h40 Discussion

12 00-13h30 : Déjeuner

Panel 5 | Réflexions méthodologiques : photographie et post indépendances / Methodological considerations: photography and  post-independence

• 13h30 Jennifer Bajorek (professor of Comparative Literature and Visual Studies at Hampshire College, USA), Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye (anthropologue CNRS), Soso Soumaré (EHESS), Raphaël Grisey (cinéaste/artiste visuel), Lecture croisée : les photographies de Bouba Touré
• 14h30 Ibrahima Mohamadou (PhD en Histoire, FALSH–Université de Maroua, Cameroun)  L’histoire des studios photos à Garoua (Cameroun) : enjeux et défis méthodologiques pour une conservation des sources visuelles (1953-2000)
• 15h05 Ileana L. Selejan (lecturer in Art History, Culture and  Society at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and co-curator of the international photography biennial BredaPhoto) The Political-Aesthetic Afterlives of Nicaraguan Revolutionary Photography

15 40 Discussion

Modération : Damarice Amao (Centre  Pompidou) et Christian Joschke (MCF ENSBA Paris)

Journée 3 | Day 3 22 mai 2025

9h15-9h30 : Introduction

Panel 6 | Cultures visuelles à partir des luttes d’indépendances : ruptures et continuités / Visual cultures from the struggle for independence: Ruptures and continuities

• 9h30 Justin Carville (professor of historical and theoretical studies in photography at IADT, Dun Laoghaire, Ireland) Emergent Pasts: Photography and Folklore in Post-Colonial Ireland
• 10h05 Javed Sultan (award-winning photographer and  PhD candidate at the Photographic  History Research Centre at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK) Inventing ‘Off-beat’ Photojournalism:  Inclusion of Ordinary People in the  Democratization Process of Indian Society in the 1960s
• 10h40 Jae Won Edward Chung (assistant professor in Asian Languages and Cultures Comparative Literature,  affiliate faculty at Rutgers University New Brunswick, US) Postwar Realist Photography in  South Korea and the Limits of Documentarity
• 11h05 Daen Palma Huse (graduate student in History of Art at University College London & research fellow at the Library of Congress, DC) Beyond Black and White: Photographic (Re-)Production in  Nineteenth-Century Lima

11h40 Discussion

Modération : Christian Joschke (MCF ENSBA Paris) et Raquel Schefer (MCF Sorbonne Nouvelle)

12 h 30 Déjeuner

Comité scientifique

• Damarice Amao (Centre Pompidou) Manuel Charpy (InVisu)
• Krupa Desai (Tata Institute of Social  Sciences, Mumbai / British Art Network)
• Olivier Hadouchi (Chercheur et programmateur indépendant) Érika Nimis (Université du Québec à  Montréal)
• Marian Nur Goni (Paris 8, AIAC) Gaëlle Prodhon (InVisu/INHA)
• Raquel Schefer (U-Sorbonne Nouvelle  Paris 3, LIRA ; CAV, Département Cinéma et audiovisuel)