Inhabited Landscapes:
Bougault’s Algeria

Inhabited Landscapes features a series of large, panoramic landscapes of Algeria, created during the late-19th and early-20th centuries by the French photographer Alexandre Bougault. The photographs circulated among European and North American audiences through the tourist industry. The images feature a variety of scenes that at first glance recall the French Romantic Orientalist vision: stoic Arabian Camels amid an endless Saharan expanse, large groups of cloaked figures kneeling in prayer, a sea of low slung clay buildings, and women gathering water in a palm-filled oasis.
This project invites a new reading of the photographs as spaces where the notions of identity, loss, presence, and power shape the complex relations between the Algerian terrain and its inhabitants. The landscapes can be seen to reveal a series of paradoxes, making visible the conundrum of European Imperialism – the desire to modernize a “primitive” land, while at the same time longing to experience and represent it as untouched by Western modernization.
Exhibition Name
Inhabited Landscapes:
Bougault’s Algeria
Exhibition Type
Solo Exhibitions
Place
Winter Gallery
Dates
Feb 18, 2017 - Apr 23, 2017
Curators
Inhabited Landscapes: Bougault’s Algeria is curated by Ana-Joel Falcón-Wiebe, Lecturer in Art History.
Artists
Alexandre Bougault
Ana-Joel Falcón-Wiebe on Alexandre Bougault
Falcón-Wiebe, Lecturer in Art History, speaks about Alexandre Bougault and Inhabited Landscapes: Bougault’s Algeria.
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