Icons of the South - Portraits of Ouleds-Nails (Algeria 1860-1910)
 
Introduced by and image selection by
Michel Mégnin
 
Michel Mégnin is a French collector, researcher and author of the first biography of Lehnert & Landrock in Tunis 1900, Lehnert & Landrock photographs (Paris: Paris-Méditerranée; Tunis: Apollonia, 2005). More recently he authored La photo-carte en Algérie au XIXe siècle (Paris: Non Lieu; Algiers: Edif 2000, 2007).
 
Special thanks to Angela Martin for an attentive and sensitive translation from the original French.
 

Editorial note: This exhibition concerns the "Ouled Nails" a tribal grouping within the colonial context of 19th century Algeria when the ethnographers, travel writers and photographers were mostly of foreign descent. We see the world now through perspectives that have been moulded by social and political changes and hopefully ever-rising levels of our understanding of, and appreciation for, cultural diversity. The photographs in this exhibition take us into a different world.   Alan Griffiths