III. Sociability and circulation
The world of the Uzan Family is, first of all, a world of carefully constructed and constantly evolving social networks. Being proudly Italian, the Uzan family lived their daily life at the crossroads of different worlds: the Italian community, the well-established French and Jewish-Tunisian bourgeoisie, and the colonial Tunisia. The family environment for a long time kept the virtual monopoly of all social relations, gradually opening up – especially during the second post-war period – to other actors of more varied origins and backgrounds.
The perspective of the photos hides a part of the colonial social reality depicting only a small piece of the country: the part occupied by the European population, even if it was another nationality than French. The world of the colonized seems to enter only rarely in the daily life of the Uzan family. It remained marginal, almost absent.
Thus, a microcosm of family and friendly relations unfolds over the generations, restoring a subjective but fascinating picture of the sociality of the Judeo-Livornese middle class in Tunisia during colonial times.