Décadrage colonial

A little-known chapter in the commitment of the Surrealists and the artistic avant-garde of the 1930s.

In 1931, in reaction to the opening of the International Colonial Exhibition in Vincennes, the Surrealists denounced France’s imperialist policy by organising a counter-exhibition entitled “La vérité sur les colonies”. While this book revisits this particular chapter of the Surrealist struggle and its subversive iconography (photographs, graphic productions and militant photomontages), it also addresses the equivocal relationship that modern photography has maintained with “other” cultures, past or contemporary.

Through the collection of photographs from the Musée National d’Art Moderne (Laure Albin-Guillot, Pierre Boucher, Pierre Ichac, François Kollar, Eli Lotar, Man Ray, Roger Parry, André Steiner, Titaÿna, Pierre Verger, René Zuber, etc.), the gaze of the time reveals all its complexity, between fetishization and renewal of the codes of exotic representation.