Contesting Views: The Visual Economy of France and Algeria by Edward Welch and Joseph McGonagle (review)

This incisive and fascinating study provides a new perspective on the complex relationship between France and Algeria by analysing the central role that visual culture plays in shaping our understanding of the two countries’ common history. It encompasses a wide range of material, tracing the circulation of, and connections between, diverse still and moving images made on both sides of the Mediterranean since the outbreak of the Algerian War in 1954. Part I explores the role played by the photographic image in mediating French Algeria and the Algerian War, both at the time and subsequently. Chapter 1 examines the construction of a nostalgic vision of French Algeria in photobooks from the 1990s and 2000s produced for a pied-noir audience by authors of similar origin or connections such as Jacques Gandini, Teddy Alzieu, and Élisabeth Fechner. The visual strategies they employ are highlighted through analysis of the alternative perspectives that emerge in photobooks by Pierre Bourdieu and Marc Riboud. Chapter 2 explores the visual legacy of the Algerian War in images of the pied-noir exodus and, primarily, of military conflict. It demonstrates the heterogeneity of visual representation of the Algerian War, assessing not only images by well-known photographers René Bail and Marc Flament but also photographs taken by conscript soldiers (including Marc Garanger), as well as official images that reveal an Algerian perspective (by Mohamed Kouaci). Chapter 3 focuses on the ‘visual career’ of the events of 17 October 1961 in Paris, when the police brutally repressed a peaceful protest by Algerian immigrants. It argues convincingly that photographic representation is crucial to the historical fortunes of these events, while it considers the impact of an iconography of victimhood on the Franco-Algerian relationship. Part II examines the legacy of the Algerian War and postindependence Franco-Algerian relations in contemporary visual culture. Chapter 4 provides an original slant on representations of the Algerian War in French cinema by showing how it is restaged from the viewpoint of the male child in contrasting post-2000 examples by Mehdi Charef, Thomas Gilou, and Michael Haneke. Chapter 5 explores depictions of the Mediterranean Sea either as barrier or frontier or as bridge, hyphen, or point of crossing. Diverse media and perspectives, from both France and Algeria, are analysed, including the iconic photographs of the pied-noir exodus, a documentary film by Élisabeth Leuvrey, video installations by Zineb Sedira and Katia Kameli, and a ‘map’ for clandestine migrants by artist Zineddine Bessaï. Chapter 6 considers how the relationship between France and Algeria is staged through the representation of postcolonial space in both countries in films primarily by Merzak Allouache, Dominique Cabrera, Tony Gatlif, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmèche, and Djamel Bensalah, as well as in a book of photographs by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. These nuanced analyses draw on a range of criticism from the fields of history, French (and wider) cultural studies, photography studies, and film studies. This timely volume will be most useful to scholars and students in these areas, but will also appeal to those with an interest in the history of the Franco-Algerian relationship and its ongoing intricacies fifty years after decolonization.