Photographer Samuel Fosso lived for many years in Bangui with his family. With the rebels overrunning his town, he managed to escape just time, finally settling in Paris. This interesting video tells his story…
Hair matters in Chimamanda Adiche’s novel “Americanah”
Listen well: African women are talking about their hair. I just finished Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s novel, Americanah, and was totally taken by her wonderful vivid description of a hair-braiding salon in Trenton New Jersey. I never realized it took six hours to have one’s hair braided and that it hurt so much! Being a person […]
Interview with artist Zanele Muholi from South Africa
Interview with South African photographer Zanele Muholi by Diane Frankel. Zanele Muholi, is one of South Africa ‘s foremost artists. She sees herself as a visual activist. She addresses in her work the reality of what is to be lesbian and gay in South Africa where homosexuality is not accepted and where some cultural and […]
An Art Crtic in Africa: Holland Cotter’s report on the state of the Arts in Africa
Holland Cotter, art critic for the New York Times, spend a month in November 2011 in West Africa. Jerry Vogel, an expert on West Africa, who had just finished guiding a group organized by the Museum for African Art through Northern Mali – see earlier posts on my travels to Mali – guided Mr. Cotter […]
Rotimi Fani-Kayode: “Nothing to Lose” in Chelsea
Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Nothing to Lose at the Walther Collection Project Space. I was thrilled to see that finally Rotimi Fani-Kayode was getting a proper showing in New York. This tribute to his photographic work is long overdue. Indeed he was seminal in his portraiture of black African homosexuality. “The first solo exhibition in New York […]
Congolese Wrestlers by Colin Delfosse
These images taken in Kinshasa by Colin Delfosse, a documentary photographer and member of the collective Out of Focus, remind me of the theatricality of Pieter Hugo‘s Nollywood photography series. However here, there is an added mystical and magical “voodoo” element. Delfosse writes from Kinshasa in 2010: Eight million inhabitants, thousands of shegués (street children), […]
Africa at Paris-Photo
African Photography at the Grand Palais The fifteenth edition of Paris-Photo was held for the first time at the Grand Palais, a grand Beaux Arts building remarkable for its iron, steel, and glass barrel vaulted roof. This new location for the fair, which was previously underground in the Carrousel du Louvre, is best adapted to […]
Highlights from Bamako Biennale
BAMAKO BIENNALE A few impressions: Walking through the PanAfrican exhibition is to get a feel for the diversity of expressions, experiences, peoples, and landscapes of the African continent. No one genre dominates. Landscapes are no longer sublime . Deceptively banal, silently empty, Jo Ratcliffe’s landscapes document the aftermath of war. Her method is subtle and […]
News Update: African photography Bamako and Paris
African photography: a few important events are coming up. On November 1, 2011 African photography will hold center stage in Bamako, Mali with the opening of “Rencontres de Bamako” featuring African contemporary photographers. This year, the theme of this Biennale’s 9th edition is the quest for a sustainable world. The Rencontres /Encounters are a joint […]
Heroic Africans at the Metropolitan Museum
HEROIC AFRICANS REINSTATED by Isabel Stainow Wilcox The exhibition “ Heroic Africans: Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculptures” at the Metropolitan Museum curated by Dr. Alisa LaGamma, gathers pre-colonial sculpture from eight landmark sculptural traditions from West and Central Africa created between the 12th century and the 20th century. Focused on sculptural forms that commemorate important leaders, […]
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