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Paul S. Landau and Deborah D. Kaspin, eds. Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. 380 pp. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $24.95. Paper.
Images and Empires is a conceptually sophisticated and empirically rich contribution to a growing body of scholarship that challenges the notion that the visual history of colonial and postcolonial Africa can be reduced to the power of the "Western gaze." Through analysis of visual genres and media ranging from advertisements to films, cartoons, ethnographic photography, sculpture, and photographic portraiture, the various authors in this volume seek to discern the meanings and politics of visual images that are produced by and circulate between Africans and Europeans. In his exceptionally erudite and wide-ranging introductory essay, Paul Landau deploys Michel de Montaigne's concept of "amazing distance" to emphasize the crucial role that images play in enabling people to make sense of their own societies and interpret others, particularly...