ABSTRACT
Among the items that the Dutch modernist and travel writer Louis Couperus (1863-1923) purchased during his six-month stay from November 1920 to May 1921 in northern Africa is a series of postcards. One of them depicts a young girl, naked, one hand on her hip, with elaborate jewellery around her neck and with a white garment draped over her arms. The picture communicates a particular kind of ambiguity. On the one hand the photograph is intended to communicate pride and beauty; on the other hand we have trouble buying into this. In particular, the girl’s facial expression resists such a reading. Her facial features appear to betray melancholy or maybe discomfort, something that makes this photograph far more ambiguous than its creators intended. Why was Couperus – whose homosexuality was a public secret1 – interested in an image like this (which eventually was partially reproduced to accompany his story “Safar and Ali”, published in the Christmas special of the Dutch daily newspaper Haagsche Post in 1921 and situated in the part of Algeria that he had visited the year before)?
