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Francois Edmond Portier (1862-1928) was undoubtedly 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. He was born in France and appears in Senegal around the year 1900. Unlike most of his predecessors who plied the photographic trade in the well established and well to do city of St. Louis, Portier made his home in the new and expanding capital city of Dakar. He is best described as a "petit colon", who succeeded in making a living as a professional postcard photographer/editor selling his work from a small Dakar shop and distributing postcards to the towns along the railway line. In later years local advertisements indicate that Fortier's shop catered to the military, bureaucratic, colonial population of the city, offering tobacco, stationary, Senegalese knick-knacks and postcards.
Fortier's subject matter covers the ambit of possible topics; ethnic types, formal commissioned portraits, city, town and village views as well as scenes of daily life and labor, many of which reflect his personal ethnographic interests and those of the postcard buying public. When viewing the body of his work it appears that for the decade between 1900 and 1910 he rarely left home without his camera; then around 1912 he withdraws entirely as an active photographer, but continues to re-issue and re-print his photographs as postcards until 1923. In the early years of his career, Portier had little or no formal connection with colonial authorities, but he achieved a true measure of official recognition by 1908 when he accompanies Governor- General Merleau-Ponty to Guinée, and in 1909, Ministre Milliès-Lacroix to Guinée, Cote d'Ivoire and Dahomey. Articles documenting these official visits were published in Le Tour du Monde in 1910/11 and include dozens of Fortier's photographs.2 His collection of original plates has never surfaced and our record consists almost entirely of postcards.
In recent years a number of scholars have attempted to elevate the lowly postcard to the status of historic document, but difficulties persist3. The photograph is a copying medium and the date and place of printing or mailing in the case of postcards need not be in any way connected to the date and place the photograph was...