1Originally published in French in 2020 by La Découverte Press, Daniel Foliard’s book The Violence of Colonial Photography has been translated in English with impressive speed. The fact that publishers have not simply expected the original to generate impact before eventually translating it into other world languages speaks strongly to the relevance of this book to the scholarly world. It also underlines the support for new topics on the visual and the overtly engaged editors at Manchester University Press. Others will be keen to learn how Foliard was able to position his book in such a way to see it published into another key language in such a timely way. His argument has surely played an important role in this process.

2Foliard analyses the role of photography in envisioning the colonial expansions of Western Europe in the Global South in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. He focuses heavily on France and Great Britain and their colonial enterprises in the Asia and Africa, but he also includes commentary on colonial conquest in Latin America and other areas of the Global South. It shows the reader successful ways of using photography to study such events across different locations and is one of the useful aspects of this book. While one of his points is to show how the photography of these events influenced the way in which the great world wars of the 20^th century were photographed, his book evidences how photography can teach us how the Global South has shaped our visual discourse of these areas. These are techniques that can be used to study photography on analogous regions of the world.

3Foliard is clear about the limits of his study. Recognizing that it is impossible to view and analyse all photographs taken of any major event, he often approaches them from two specific angles. One is to look at the public usages of these images (considering them in their use as postcards, pictures in newspapers or other public announcements). The other is to look at private archives and albums from that same period. His use of private collections (especially when these are from those that took the photographs) shows the key context that such archives can offer the scholar. The other angle his study incorporates is analysis of the life of the photograph in the public realm.

4One area where this book excels is in its tracing of photographs from the event of the creation of the photograph to its appearance in public outlets (such as newspapers). In such cases when photographs of violence are featured, he is able to discuss the venue where it appeared and, importantly, register how those images influenced public debate and were it could change public opinion. While such ongoing influence is not new, Foliard’s study is one of the first to analyse them in the light of academic debate. These discussions are thought-provoking and strong.

5The Violence of Colonial Photography is also a study of important worth because of its engagement with other scholarship. While his work cites well-known writers on photography such as Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, it reaches out into other important photography scholars that strengthen his arguments and expand the discussion on photography precisely because he employs arguments presented by other scholars such as Christopher Pinney, Deborah Poole, and Elizabeth Edwards who write on photography and its role outside of Western Europe and the United States. Indeed, Foliard’s engagement with this topic and those scholars place him among those who successfully publish photography’s other histories that urgently require attention.

6It is also worth mentioning that this text’s use of photography is superb. Foliard has included over eighty photographs. None of them are gratuitously placed in the text. He engages with them in his analysis. Especially useful regarding these images are the cutlines (footnotes) that not only offer titles, but context. These contexts, often nuanced, are left in their original languages with translations into English. This not only offers an abundance of information for the reader to absorb, but also the opportunity (if their linguistic abilities allow) for them to sift through any nuanced comments with their own skills.

7Finally, and to bring this review full circle, are my comments on the translation itself. Perhaps one of best signs of a superior translation is when the reader forgets that they are reading one. This is exactly what has occurred me when reviewing this book. Only occasionally did reminders appear, such as when the writer has been creative in their use of French and created a new term. On those occasions the translator offers a sensible equivalent, but also included (in parenthesis) the original word in French. This allows non-French speaking readers to engage with Foliard’s ideas and creativity and for readers with a knowledge of the original language to interact with the writer on his own terms. For the ideas the author presents and analyses, as well as for the other reasons I mentioned above, I am happy to warmly recommend this book to those interested in how photography has shaped debates about the colonial world and how the visual influences our world view.

Agrandir Original (jpeg, 167k)