La Noire de - Atlee Watson

For this post, I chose to compare the images in pair A.

I believe that these images show the contrasting styles of France and the formerly occupied Senegal. Despite now that France has now relinquished control of Senegal, the french culture has very much pierced the culture of Senegal where they have begun to adopt french fashion and ideals. The main character loved the idea of France thinking that it was far beyond anything she could imagine in Senegal. She believed that opportunities for her in France would be endless with her mistress. However this was not the case.

In the first image we see how she has adopted french fashion by wearing the clothes that her mistress has given to her. This is interesting because she is mimicking the French people who were controlling her country for so long and in a way it seemed that she idolized them. She did this, but at the same time saw two women walking down the street who were in very traditional clothing and commented on how beautiful they were, but yet she wore the clothes of French woman instead of those from her own country. In the second image she has taken on her more natural self. She has removed the clothes and the wigs and allowed herself to not be transformed by French culture, but to be Senegalese. Both images are placed facing the other which creates an interesting mirrored effect of the same woman. One how she thinks she should be based on colonial ideas still embedded in the people of Senegal, that they should adopt the culture of France and some how fuse it with their own, but the other image is of a Senegalese who embracing her own culture. She is able to be free, at least in her own eyes, to be her self without glorified French ideals to live up to.