• France - Algeria: Visualising a (Post-)Colonial Relationship
• Research
  • Why the Franco-Algerian Relationship?
  • Iconography, Iconicity and the Algerian War
  • 'Algeria' and the French Imaginary
  • Transnational Negociations in the Contemporary Period
  • Bibliography

Research

Our project is guided by a range of objectives:

1. To examine how the idea of ‘Algeria’ has been constructed visually within French culture and cultural memory since the time of the Algerian War, and how it has evolved
2. To establish the iconography of the Algerian War as it took shape both at the time and subsequently
3. To consider why the Algerian War appears to lack the obvious body of iconic images that have coalesced around other significant conflicts of the photographic age
4. To identify and map the topoi that have structured the visual representation of Algeria in mass and popular visual culture since the time of the War, from the harki and the pied-noir to the beur of the metropolitan suburbs
5. To investigate the ways in which contemporary second-generation Algerians in France have used visual media to challenge and contest dominant representations of Algeria and the Franco-Algerian relationship
6. To contribute to our broad understanding of the role played by visual media in articulating the negotiation between cultures that takes place at both an individual and a national level
   

We intend the project to be a timely intervention into current debates within France and the UK on post-colonial politics and culture, migration, settlement and links between Europe and North Africa. A number of these themes will be explored in the exhibition that will close the project, which will be articulated around the theme of ‘Journeys’, whether they be the journeys of migration back and forth across the Mediterranean between France and Algeria, or the more figurative journeys into memory and history undertaken by all those caught up in the complex relationship between the two countries. We intend the exhibition to promote understanding among a wider audience both of the complexities of the Franco-Algerian relationship and of the politics of visual representation within the post-colonial era more generally. Follow the links on the left for more discussion of some of the research questions underpinning the project.