The Arts
June 2026
Photographic afterlives
Art, archives and the Algerian War of Independence
by Katarzyna Falecka
Photographic afterlives explores the cultural, social and political contexts in which photographs from the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) emerge in contemporary art and photobooks. It situates these practices against the backdrop of the wider archival turn in the humanities and the ongoing debates about archives in Algeria. Tracing the movement of historical photographs across multiple spaces, the book unravels the subsequent layers of meaning accrued by these images. It argues that as much as archival contemporary art performs an inquiry into the past, it equally speaks volumes about the distinct and ever-shifting needs of the present. Focused on the work of artists and photographers who excavate side-lined histories of the war, remediate well-known narratives and imagine histories that cannot be recovered from archives, Photographic afterlives shows the great potential of archives of decolonisation.
