VANCOUVER, Wash. – Washington State University Vancouver presents “After the Image: Photography, Text and History in Flandrin’s Casablanca” at 7 p.m. Feb. 24 in the Multimedia Classroom Building, Room 6. The event is free and open to the public. Parking is free beginning at 6:45 p.m.
Patricia Goldsworthy, assistant professor of transnational Europe and Middle East history at Western Oregon University, will trace Marcelin Flandrin’s transformation from an archetypal French colonial photographer to a part of Moroccan heritage through an analysis of Flandrin’s colonial career and the subsequent appropriation of his work by Moroccan scholars and cultural institutions.
Flandrin, a French-Algerian settler (pied-noir), brought his camera to Casablanca, Morocco, as it came under French rule (ca. 1912). There he collaborated with the French government and tourism boards to construct a European vision of North African society and history. Because of his heavy involvement with the French Protectorate government Moroccans criticized Flandrin’s photographs for reproducing Orientalist stereotypes and supporting the colonizing mission in the era immediately following independence (1956). Since the 1980s, however, Moroccan scholars and museums have begun to reconsider Flandrin’s images as an unparalleled portrait of Moroccan history and identity .
Goldsworthy is the author of several scholarly articles on photography in French and independent Morocco, she is currently completing her book, “Colonial Negatives: Picturing History, Modernity and Identity in Morocco.”
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