Re-Mapping Photographic Histories: In Conversation with Christine Barthe and Annabelle Lacour

The advent of photography in the mid-nineteenth century coincided with increased efforts by colonial administrations to picture the world as an expansion of their conquests. From the presence of ethnographic documents and landscape studies to the emergence of photography as a vocation for local individuals, an expansive overview suggests a much more global thrust of photographic histories as they developed across several centres beyond the West. Photographs: An Early Album of the World (1842–1911), an exhibition that recently opened at the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in April of this year, attempts to map the diverse histories and practices by decentring the locus of photography from its Euro-American focus. Co-curated by Christine Barthe and Annabelle Lacour, the exhibition presents a vast survey of images from the photography collection of the Musée du quai Branly, along with exceptional loans from other collections. The exhibition features works by local photographers from across Asia, Africa, Oceania and Central and Southern Americas.

In this conversation with Arundhati Chauhan, Barthe and Lacour take us through the inception of the exhibition, adopted from the 2019 show of the same name, which took place at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. They discuss their academic work, highlighting diverse geographic practices from across the globe, expanding the collection at the museum to take into consideration these alternate histories, as well as how their attempt to highlight a variety of practitioners and images is reflected in the curation of the exhibition and the programming around it. The exhibition presents an expansive survey that aims to understand the many diverse ways in which photography developed as a medium, a vocation and a way of imaging the world.

Photographs: An Early Album of the World is on view at the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac until 2 July 2023.

(Featured image: Photograph from Newfoundland and taken on board a ship, 1858. Image courtesy of Musée du quai - Branly Jacques Chirac.)