Mar 10, 2011 - Sale 2239

Sale 2239 - Lot 131

Price Realized: $ 1,020
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(AFRICA.) PHOTOGRAPHY. Group of one hundred and eighty-eight black and white postcards of African women from photographs by Edmond Fortier. Standard size, some used, condition about very good. Vp, circa 1900-1928

Additional Details

Francois Edmond Fortier (1862-1928) was the most prolific photographer working in French West Africa in the first decade of the 20th century. He produced well over 3300 photographs, almost all in postcard form. Fortier took up residence in Senegal around the year 1900 in the new and expanding capital city of Dakar. From there he traveled to Lagos, Guinea, Mali and the Ivory Coast, photographing the various tribal groups for the postcards that he published. Though marketed as a type of "soft-core," porn or so-called "French Postcard," these photographs captured images of a tribal Africa that was fast disappearing with the new wave of 20th-century colonialism. From a private American collection.