Five Algerian postcards: a brief history of ‘Images Populaires’ in Maghribi chromolithography

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ABSTRACT This article provides a historical introduction to chromolithographic printing in the Maghrib, paying special attention to the role of print in the spread of vernacular iconographies and figurative forms of Islamic art. I focus on five postcards – all produced in Algeria before 1928 by Éditions Bonestève – whose vibrant illustrations depict a variety of figures, creatures, and narrative scenes. They act as windows onto a huge visual archive of printed matter from the 19th and early 20th centuries that remains understudied in both the literature on colonial visual culture and Islamic art history. Perhaps due to their explicitly religious iconography, what is often overlooked about these chromolithographic images is how they were co-produced by European and North African actors and consumed by diverse markets of Muslims and non-Muslims alike; understanding them as fundamentally hybrid is crucial to appreciating their full mobility, their widespread aesthetic and political influence, and their ability to be read in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways. Ultimately this article challenges the dismissive label ‘images populaires’, while also asking whether a new reading of certain images as ‘popular’ and ‘Islamic’ is in fact possible if we look to their historical (re)appropriations within different communities, geographies, and political or artistic movements.