Postcards from Africa: Photographers of the colonial era

During the global postcard craze that peaked around 1900 and continued for several decades thereafter, photographers in Africa grasped the opportunity to serve a lucrative market for images of the continent, both locally and worldwide. Their picture postcards now contribute to understanding political and cultural changes in Africa at the time, as the rise of the new medium coincided with the expansion and consolidation of colonial rule. They also provide a way to reconstruct the life and work of the photographers of European, African and other backgrounds who created these images―which often survive only in postcard form―and in some cases published them as well.