MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE ... REPRESENTATIONS OF BLACK-WOMEN IN MID-19TH-CENTURY FRENCH PHOTOGRAPHY

This article looks at issues raised by some French photographs of blac k women taken in the mid-19th century. While standard readings of Orie ntalist painting describe representations of North Africa as construct ing an imaginary Orient for the male white viewer, I argue that this o versimplifies a complex historical, cultural, and ideological configur ation of factors relating to the transition between colonialism and im perialism in the mid-19th century and the embodiment of this configura tion consciously and unconsciously in the representations of black wom en. Using photographs taken in France. and in, North Africa, I look at issues of gender, ''race,'' and class in relation to these images, lo cating some serious problems in attempts to read them as discourses of racialised femininity, which construct signs more real than the mater ial circumstances and lived experiences through which they were produc ed and viewed. I offer a Marxist reading of these images as profoundly contradictory and unstable-embedded in modern historical and cultural processes rather than successfully fixing a clear and unchanging ster eotypical view of North Africa and the racialised sexuality of black w omen's bodies. This should in no way be seen as an attempt to rehabili tate these images. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd.