The Getty Center, Los Angeles runs an exhibition named 'Walls of Algiers: Narratives of the City' through October 18, 2009.
The city of Algiers, on the north coast of Africa, historically sheltered a diverse population. During the Ottoman centuries (1529–1830), this semi-independent province was home to Arabs, Berbers, black Africans, Turks, and kulughli (offspring of Turkish soldiers and Algerian women).
When the French occupied Algiers in 1830, they transformed the city. There was an influx of settlers from France, as well as southern Italy and Spain. European norms and the French system of governance were imposed. The land was mapped, its peoples surveyed and classified. The "Arab" city on the hillside, known as the Casbah, was separated from the "French" or "European" city that spread out in districts below and around the Casbah. This division, engraved into the spaces of Algiers, endured during the 132 years of French rule ending with the War of Independence (1954–1962).
Walls of Algiers examines the city's complex history by considering its places and peoples through diverse 19th- and 20th-century visual sources. The exhibition traces, for example, an itinerary of the Casbah and the European quarters through vintage postcards, and juxtaposes the long tradition of staged Orientalist representations of "indigenous" people with photojournalistic coverage from the Algerian War. The visual documents are reconsidered textually with the help of voices drawn from government and military reports, scholarly essays, travel accounts, novels, and poems.
The picture shows Panorama of Algiers, French, c. 1930s. -- www.getty.edu
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