This series focuses on re-constructing the narratives that took place within late 19th century and early 20th century West African ethnographic photography taken mainly by French colonialist. The photo documentation and, sometimes exploitive constructions were mass produced on postcards and carte-de-vistes and distributed globally. Hinkle uses the metaphor of disease as a meditation on colonialism and postcolonialism interpreted through poetically drawing the act of a virus entering the body in question and rendering the body as a host, in which several mutations occur for the survival of the virus. She links this relationship to the French occupation of Africa and the black female body as a charted territory. Through manipulating the scale of the images and creating interventions through drawing and painting on top of the photos, Hinkle interrogates the power dynamics between the gaze, the subject and the viewer through a term that she has coined: The Historical Present. This term is a means to navigate the residue of history through examining the exotification, and the perception of the black female body when taken out of context through the view of the Other.