Cornet, A. 2018. ‘Presenting War in Africa? Belgian Military Campaigns in German Africa under the Camera Lens (1914-1918)’. Enika Ngongo, Bérengère Piret et Nathalie Tousignant (eds), Journal of Belgian History XLVIII, 1/2, special issue : Congo at War : 76-111.  (PR).

Article in a scientific Journal / Article in a Journal

In the Western imagination, when we talk about Wordl War I, it immediately conjures images of the European front's trenches. However the African continent was also a battleground where German, French, British, Portuguese and Belgian troops clashed for four years. Every belligerent party enlisted tens, if not hundred of thousands of African soldiers and carriers. Just as in Europe, some soldiers engaged in the practice of photography, accumulating pictures of men, weapons and landscapes. But their practice had the peculiarity of being a part of a colonial universe characterized by imperial domination, segregation and ranking of civilisations. How may the profile of these photographer soldiers and the study of their preferred subjects matter the way in which the photographic practice in Africa combined codes of war with those of colonial culture? Are we seeing the development of a new cultural approach to the war in Africa? In a attempt to answer these questions, a collective portrait of the operators and the range of topics covered in East Africa between 1914 and 1918 are compared with the photographers on the Yser or the Somme fronts, as potrayed in their photographic albums.