(Re)viewing old Algeria

Turn-of-the-century French photos of Algeria, on view at Skidmore's Tang Museum, reveal not just the idylls of European exoticism but also crucial paradoxes of imperialism, power, and identity.

Inhabited Landscapes: Bougault's Algeria features panoramic landscapes shot during the late 19th and early 20th centuries by French photographer Alexandre Bougault. Popular with European and North American armchair tourists, the images reflect a classic Romantic Orientalist vision: stoic camels on an endless desert, cloaked figures kneeling in prayer, a palm-ringed oasis. But this exhibition, curated by Ana-Joel Falcón-Wiebe of Skidmore's art history faculty, invites a new reading of the scenes as paradoxes that reveal a desire both to modernize a "primitive" culture and to represent it as exotically non-Western.

Inhabited Landscapes opens Feb. 18 and runs through April 23 at Skidmore's Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery; hours and more are here. Falcón-Wiebe will lecture about her research Tuesday, Feb. 21, at 5:30 p.m., and she'll lead a tour of the exhibition Wednesday, April 12, at noon. With a Ph.D. from Queen's University in Ontario, she has taught at colleges in Canada, France and the US and also has curatorial experience at the National Gallery of Canada, the Louvre, and the Brooklyn Museum.