THE FRENCH COLONIES — 340 Photographs - Lot 209

Lot 209
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THE FRENCH COLONIES — 340 Photographs - Lot 209
THE FRENCH COLONIES — 340 Photographs [COLLECTIVE WORK]. — The French Colonies. 340 Photographs. Paris, Hélio-Sadag de France - Ernest Flammarion, publisher, 1931. Large 8vo, VIII-271 pp., paperback, illustrated cover in color and photomontage, pink paper spine. Extensive photographic illustrations in sepia heliogravure, comprising 340 photographs—full-page, half-page, or several per page—as well as cartographic documents. The BnF specifies the completion/publication date as August 7, 1931. An important photographic album published in the year of the 1931 International Colonial Exposition in Paris, offering a broad panorama of the French colonial empire at its peak. An institutional copy is, in fact, described as a work published on the occasion of the 1931 Colonial Exposition. The book systematically covers the French possessions in North Africa, West and Equatorial Africa, Madagascar, the Indian Ocean, and Indochina, as well as other colonial territories. Today, the photographs constitute the volume’s primary appeal: urban and architectural views, landscapes, people, scenes of work and daily life, agriculture, transportation, monuments, and archaeological sites. The photographs come from various sources and colonial agencies. The reproduced images bear, in particular, the marks of the Economic Agency of the A.O.F., the Economic Agency of Indochina, the Messageries Maritimes, or the names of photographers such as Victor-Émile Richard. The Polynesian Historical Media Library also lists Lucien Gauthier among the photographers featured in the book. The pages devoted to Sudan, Senegal, Ubangi-Shari, Indochina, Cambodia, and Tonkin feature, in particular, large-scale heliogravure compositions, including views of Bamako, the cliffs and villages of the Dogon region, fishermen on the Logone River, Cambodian dancers, and pagodas and monuments in Tonkin. Taken as a whole, the volume now constitutes a substantial body of visual material on the official representation of the French colonial empire during the interwar period, which must naturally be viewed within the ideological and political context of its publication. Condition: paperback copy preserved in its remarkable original illustrated cover. The cover is faded and scuffed, with wear on the spines, caps, and corners; there are small tears and a few marginal losses; the spine and stitching show signs of wear. The interior, however, is relatively well-preserved, with some foxing and isolated marks. An old handwritten notation, “150 F,” in pencil appears on the half-title/title page.
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