Weisse Blicke--Schwarze Körper

About this book

"The collection and presentation of images was very much an act of appropriation of Africa by Europe. Late 19th and early 20th Century it was mainly the picture postcard, the people gave in the Western world an idea of the 'dark continent'. The millions of cards were circulating on the central mass media of visual popular culture and helped to push through the achievements of imperial politics and legitimize. The historian Joachim Zeller has chosen for this volume, approximately 400 images, mostly postcards from the collection of Peter Weiss. They show the Africans how he saw the whites, or wanted to see as exotic, savage, colonial subject or joke. The photographs not only document the entire spectrum of the colonialism of the images, but also thematize the resistances, the opposing views of Africans - insisting on their own sense - 'look back' could. The author reads the picture post card 'against the grain' and provides the representations of competence in the historical and ideological context. He shows how Africa (partners) by the colonial view of the "white man" exoticized, typed, trivialized, objectified, for advertising or propaganda were clamped. This volume helps to break patterns and racial perception is questioning the traditional Sun from the colonial era white look."--Publisher's website.