Johann Le Guelte is Assistant Professor of French and Francophone studies and French Program Coordinator at Xavier University. He received his Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University in 2019. His research investigates the visual politics of the interwar French empire. In his current book project, tentatively titled “Visual Empire: Photography and the State in Interwar France and Senegal,” he examines the production and reception of colonial photographic propaganda to determine how state-sponsored photographs became official colonial information. In interwar France, these images were often presented as irrefutable evidence to support the need for the mission to civilize, an idea that long influenced France’s colonial imaginary. Le Guelte’s work also examines transnational instances of photographic resistance in both French West Africa and metropolitan France, where “deviant” expressions of democratic photography continually challenged the state’s attempted creation of a visual empire.