Photographie à partir des luttes d’indépendance : pratiques, circulations et esthétiques.
Photography from the Struggles for Independence: Practices, circulations and aesthetics.

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?

International Symposium. InVisu/CNRS/INHA.

Programme colloque

JOURNÉE 1 | DAY 1

20 mai 2025
9h00 : Accueil | Welcome
9h15-9h30 : Introduction

PANEL 1 | La photographie, arme d’émancipation / Photography, 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

10h05 – 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

10h40 – TABLE RONDE ALGERIA

avec Chaouki Adjali (auteur et ayant-droits 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

11h40 : Discussion

12h00-13h30 : DÉJEUNER/LUNCH

PANEL 2 | La photographie, arme d’émancipation : supports, matériels photographiques / Photography, a weapon of emancipation : Photographic equipment and media

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 Post-Independence Angola, 1965–85

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

16h00 – Margaux Lavernhe (doctorante EHESS / CRAL)
Photographie et performances de la nation ghanéenne : iconographies et contre-iconographies du nkrumahisme ( années 1950-1960)

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

17h45 : Discussion
Modération : Sonia Voss (commissaire d’exposition) & Marian Nur Goni (MCF Paris 8)

JOURNÉE 2 | DAY 2
21 mai 2025
9h15-9h30 : 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, 1950-1970

10h05 – Paula Barreiro López (professeure d’histoire de l’art contemporain à l’université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès, FRAMESPA, et directrice de la plateforme de recherche internationale MoDe(s) — Modernité(s) Décentralisée(s)
Contre-visualités tricontinentales: photographie, photomontage et communication visuelle

10h40 – 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

12h00-13h30 : DÉJEUNER/LUNCH

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, US), Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye (anthropologue au 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

15h40 : 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)

12h30 DÉJEUNER/LUNCH

This conference will be filmed and broadcast at a later date.

Conference organized by Gaëlle Prodhon (InVisu/INHA)
with the help of the InVisu team and the INHA scientific events team

Scientific commitee :
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)