Afro-Atlantic images: transnational uses and circuits of photographs of Black people in colonialist times

Abstract

This article addresses the modes of representation and circulation of photographs of Black people in the early years of European colonialist expansion, between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Drawing on cartes de visite and especially on postcards with images of Africans, Afro-Caribbe-ans and Afro-Brazilians, the text proposes a transnational approach to the ways in which the visual canons and the produc-tions of meaning stemming from the visual/racial culture of European colonialism have been reproduced in commercial photographs of the period.