In many ways, garments were a marker of disparity between Vietnamese and North African colonial portraiture. In Algeria and Morocco, postcards were often organized around the veiledβor rather, unveiledβwoman, a theme central to Orientalist art and photography. Colonialist photographers, such as Jean Geiser , Rudolf Lehnert and Ernst Landrock, typically presented bodies of unclothed women from the waist up, displaying a diaphanous veil as an accessory. This practice became de rigueur in the late 19 th and early 20 th century: the bodies of North African women were repetitively objectified in postcards, with the female breast systematically showcased as objects of visual consumption.
In the colonial context, the veil assumed multiple meanings for the French. On the one hand, the French exoticized the veil into a phantasm of the Oriental female.
The photographers employed visual strategies to transform the veil from its original function of female concealment to a symbol of sexual attraction, thereby perpetuating the stereotype of North African women as lascivious.
This phenomenon is described by what Lisa Z. These included a cropped visual field and close-up camera angles. The aim of inducing frisson is particularly noticeable in many postcards of fully-veiled women in public spaces. They either featured unequivocal captions that referenced the exotic theme of the harem or included titillating details, such as a glimpse of high heels, which played into the eroticization of the fully-veiled woman.
Most wear baggy pants down to the ankle, strawberry pink or almond green blouses, and ponytails twisted in a sash that conceals everything and raises like a horn. Splendid eyes, innocent look⦠they will be veiled at puberty. If we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society, its capacity for resistance, we must first of all conquer the women; we must go and find them behind the veil where they hide themselves and in the houses where the men keep them out of sight.
