TalkSeePhotography Thinking with Photography and Bourdieu’s Algeria Work

TSPs March event will see Professor Bridget Fowler and Dr Alison Eldridge in conversation about the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s photographic work from Algeria.

After serving as a soldier with the French army in Algeria revolution Bourdieu took a position at the university in Algers and began to make photographs alongside his note taking. His photographs and notes provide a subtle representation of Algerian life in the midst of the fierce independence struggle, and a record of the colonial apparatus' methodical oppression of the colonial subject. During the decades that followed, his Algerian experience would manifest in his writings on the interwoven structures of culture and the economy of social fabric. The images he made were hidden from public view until recently and are now thought to be central to Bourdieu’s development as a radical thinker.

Professor Bridget Fowler and Dr Eldridge are both affiliated with/working at G.U. School of Social and Political science. Prof Fowler’s research interest includes: The social theory of Pierre Bourdie, Sociology of culture and Marxist-feminist debates. Dr Eldridge works on the relationship between photography and sociology with a particular focus on ethics, aesthetics and politics within photographic production.

Special thanks to Christina Frisinghelli and the team behind Camera Austria, Graz for kindly granting us rights to use Pierre Bourdieu’s images in the projection.