The seen, the unseen, the invented. Misrepresentations of African 'otherness' in the making of a colony. Eritrea, 1885-1896

At the turn of the 19th century the production of knowledge of African otherness and colonial reality was a process that availed itself of many different gazes and perceptions, amongst which a far from secondary role was played by photography. The essay identifies its themes and methods at the beginning of Italian colonial rule in Eritrea, as a first step towards clarification of the origins and articulation of the historical memory it helped to create, which still survives, in many ways unchanged, into the present days. Decoding the way Africa has been viewed means comprehending the mechanism through which it was possible to create a specific perception of Africa and casting light on the ideological framework which, in colonial society, determined relations between the colonised and the colonisers.