Title: Notre Dame d’Afrique and Carmelite Convent, Algiers, Algeria

Description

This photochrome print of the Notre Dame d’Afrique church in Algiers is part of “Views of People and Sites in Algeria” from the catalog of the Detroit Publishing Company (1905). Notre Dame d’Afrique was described in the 1911 edition of Baedeker’s The Mediterranean, seaports and sea routes: Handbook for Travellers as “a pilgrimage-church for sick persons and mariners, founded by Card. Lavigerie in 1872, [which] rises conspicuously on a spur of the N.E. slope of Mont Bouzareah, above the Christian and the Jewish burial-grounds.” The church’s significance as a symbol of tolerance was evident in the inscription over the apse: Notre Dame d’Afrique priez pour nous et pour les Musulmans (Our Lady of Africa, pray for us and for the Muslims). The print shows a part of the Carmelite Convent in the left foreground, its large garden surrounded by walls, and the church beyond perched on a cliff above the Bay of Algiers.

The Detroit Photographic Company was launched as a photographic publishing firm in the late 1890s by Detroit businessman and publisher William A. Livingstone, Jr., and photographer and photo-publisher Edwin H. Husher. They obtained exclusive rights to use the Swiss "Photochrom" process for converting black-and-white photographs into color images and printing them by photolithography. This innovative process was applied to the mass production of color postcards, prints, and albums for sale to the American market. The firm became the Detroit Publishing Company in 1905.
Print no. "8497".

Last updated: September 4, 2013