François-Edmond Fortier

The Metropolitan Museum of Art collection includes a gelatin silver print, showing a studio portrait of a young African man in traditional dress. Further, the museum owns photomechanical reproductions of postcards titled Afrique Occidentale – Danseurs "Miniankas" and West Africa, young Wolof girls. Further, the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, hold images by Fortier in their collections. The Library of Congress also has photographs by Fortier in their Africana Historic Postcard Collection. In France, the Musée Picasso has 40 photographs by Fortier from the artist's private collection, and the Centre Edmond Fortier and the Association Images & Mémoires have published his work and a complete catalogue online.

Fortier's original plates or negatives having been lost, research about his work relies on publications and collections of original prints. From 1986 to 1988, French scholar Phillip David published three volumes of Fortier's comprehensive catalogue documenting his numerous postcards. In 1995, the association Images & Mémoires (I&M) started a project in order to rescue, preserve and study West African photography. With the support of UNESCO's World Memory Programme, the association published a CD-ROM with over 3,000 reproductions of postcards depicting West Africa from 1895 to 1930. About 900 of the images in this collection had been published by Fortier. The selection from his legacy notably did not include Fortier's images of nude women. • Illustration — Portrait of Samory Touré holding a Quran, c. 1899 Apart from other scholars, Brazilian historian Daniela Moreau has published several studies of Fortier's work. One of these covered Fortier's travels to Toumbouctu in 1906, and another one his journey to Dahomey from 1908 to 1909. In her 2007 paper, Patricia Hickling discussed the professional relationship between photographer Émile Noal and Fortier. Based on historical evidence and stylistic comparison of several images, she posited that these images had actually been taken and published by Noal and were later published by Fortier under his own name. As the new owners of a photographic studio often kept and republished photographs by the previous photographer, cultural anthropologist Christraud M. Geary also wrote that Fortier had published his earliest postcard series with images by Noal and another French photographer under his own name. Further, Moreau discussed images that Fortier had changed in his later editions, for example by deleting colonial buildings in the background of a picture showing Africans in a small market town. By this deletion of an existing French setting, Moreau said Fortier intended to "exoticise" Africans. One of Fortier's portraits shows the Muslim cleric, founder of the Wassoulou Empire and military strategist against French colonial rule Samory Touré after having been captured, holding a Quran in his hands. This photograph has been reproduced various times in books, articles, postal stamps and even record covers, making it an iconic image of African resistance against colonial rule. Another notable African leader portrayed by Fortier was the son of El Hadj Omar, Aguibou Tall. As Pablo Picasso owned about 40 photographs by Fortier and other images of African women, influences by these photographs on his 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon have been proposed. Thus, scholar Janie Cohen posited "a framework for its final composition, specific poses, elements that contributed to his [Picasso's] nascent interest in simultaneous multiple perspectives." As a conclusion of her study of Fortier and his legacy, Moreau wrote in 2018: