Joannès Barbier

Jean Ennemond Barbier, commonly known as Joannès Barbier, was a French photographer known for his images in colonial West Africa in the 1890s, operating out of Senegal. His images reached notoriety when he took pictures of massacred Africans, in some cases arranging the scenes for photographic effect. Later, he acted as an organizer of "black villages" or human zoos at the colonial exhibitions in Lyon in 1894, Paris in 1895, and Rouen in 1896.

Photographer of the Bakel massacre in 1891

In 1891, Joannès Barbier accompanied French officers during the Tukulor War conflict, when the French attacked the Toucouleur empire. He arrived in Bakel at the time when the executions of Toucouleurs were taking place. He took several views of piled-up or decapitated corpses of "supposed fugitives from the enemy army", probably for the private albums of the soldiers. However, some prints were sent to the photographer's brother in France, and the latter sold them to the newspaper L'Illustration. While this newspaper was usually "not very critical of colonial policy", its editors published his photos in controversial article entitled The Work of Civilization in Africa on April 11, 1891. Among those images were pictures from Bakel and from Nioro (where Emporer Amadhu had set his capital during a war for succession with his brothers.