Darren Newbury undertakes a rigorous examination of the visual mediation strategies orchestrated by the United States Information Agency (USIA) as part of the United States' public diplomacy initiatives targeting the African continent during the central decades of the Cold War. Cold War Photographic Diplomacy: The US Information Agency and Africa is situated at the confluence of disciplinary fields such as the cultural history of international relations, critical visual theory, and postcolonial studies, offering a nuanced account of the iconographic mechanisms mobilized by the U.S. propaganda apparatus to exert symbolic influence over emergent postcolonial imaginaries. As Newbury explicitly states in the preface of his monograph, "this book is an attempt to grapple with the substantial collection of photographs and documents that comprise the USIA archive, and to delineate USIA's engagement with Africa, as both an idea and a continent of independent postcolonial nations coming into being" (xii).

The historical context examined by Newbury, spanning approximately from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s, is shaped by the African decolonization process and the concomitant emergence of newly independent nation-states. Within this broader framework of global geopolitical reconfiguration, the United States sought to counter the expanding influence of the Soviet bloc through a comprehensive strategy in which cultural and media diplomacy assumed a central role.

Newbury demonstrates how the photographic production promoted by the USIA was conceived as an instrument of international legitimation, aimed at presenting the United States as a reliable ally of the newly independent African states and as a model of social integration and democratic modernity. As articulated in one of the chapters: "For USIA, photography was a medium for imagining and shaping postcolonial African futures in relation to the US [...]. Photography provided a means of actively fostering postcolonial political relations and forms of belonging" (234). However, the author does not shy away from addressing the contradictions embedded within this visual discourse, insofar as it was articulated in parallel with a domestic reality marked by racial segregation, structural discrimination, and the social unrest associated with the civil rights movement.

The structure of the volume follows a carefully articulated thematic logic, enabling the reader to trace the development of the argument from theoretical frameworks to empirical case studies. The first chapter, Photography, Race, and the Cold War Imagination, lays the conceptual foundation of the book by examining the central role of race in the construction of the U.S. propaganda imaginary within the bipolar geopolitical context. As described, while Soviet propagandists exploited racial discrimination as a key vulnerability of the American model, the United States was compelled to mobilize significant resources to counter this perception. The second chapter, Photography, Public Diplomacy, and the Africa Program at the United States Information Agency, delves into the institutional apparatus of the USIA, detailing the consolidation and evolution of the programmatic architecture that underpinned visual intervention in Africa during the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations. Chapters three and four - "Toward a Better World" and "A Pleasant Mixture of Negro and White" - address, respectively, the representations of African decolonization within a multilateral framework and the strategic deployment of civil rights narratives as a metonym for American democracy, exploring also how photography was instrumentalized to engage the arrival of African politicians and diplomats in the United States. The final two chapters present insightful case studies of visual diplomacy practices. "Africans at the Wax Museum" analyzes photographic representations of cultural exchanges and diplomatic visits as mechanisms for the symbolic production of international friendship; whereas "Don't Touch Those Windows" investigates the role of photography in the public media spaces of African cities, highlighting how the USIA interpreted newly "independent Africa as a media vacuum into which it needed to step to counter Soviet and Chinese media operations" (208).

From a methodological perspective, the study is anchored in meticulous archival research centered on the extensive collections of the United States Information Agency, and it is situated within a robust interdisciplinary framework that integrates visual culture theory with scholarship on the transnational circulation of images. Through a careful analysis of photographic material associated with diplomatic missions, cultural exchange initiatives, institutional encounters, and visual representations of the U.S. civil rights movement, Newbury elucidates the mechanisms through which these visual artefacts were disseminated. These photographs, distributed via itinerant exhibitions, propaganda posters, illustrated booklets, and periodicals, were strategically embedded within postcolonial African societies, where they operated as instruments of soft power and visual diplomacy.

A notable strength of Cold War Photographic Diplomacy is its framing of photography as an active instrument of diplomatic strategy rather than mere documentation. Newbury effectively demonstrates how visual production served U.S. geopolitical aims in postcolonial Africa, contributing to broader understandings of visual media as agents in shaping transnational imaginaries and ideological narratives. This theoretical stance is powerfully supported by the volume's rich visual corpus. The meticulous selection of images, such as magazines, pamphlets, posters, original and duplicate negatives, contact sheets, and work prints, combined with the impeccable editorial work by The Pennsylvania State University Press, establishes a nonverbal storyline that complements and deepens the written analysis. The interplay between text and image produces a compelling evidentiary framework that renders visibly the symbolic operations underpinning the USIA's photographic diplomacy across African nations during the Cold War.

In research of this kind, where materials are produced with specific audiences in mind, it is essential to understand how these materials were perceived. Newbury recognizes this limitation and openly addresses it: "The African reception of USIA photography is a major limitation of this study" (239). However, this lack of reception sources should not be seen as a methodological shortcoming, but rather as a potential avenue for future research. Building on this outstanding work, future studies could investigate the ways in which these images were received, appropriated, or reinterpreted by African audiences.

In conclusion, Cold War Photographic Diplomacy stands as a significant contribution to the fields of visual diplomacy, Cold War history in Africa, and the political utilization of imagery in postcolonial contexts. Its rigorous analytical framework, empirical foundation, and interdisciplinary perspective establish it as an indispensable resource for scholars investigating the connections between geopolitics and visual representation in the twentieth century.

José Manuel López Torán