The first photographic studios in Africa opened in the early 1930s. They made family portraits, and photographed important celebrations. Such photos had a special place in people`s homes. Considerable attention was given to their presentation. People went to framemakers for the frames, and the framed photographs were displayed in a setting of curtains, flowers and cushions.
Sakho (b. Senegal, 1949) wants to reach back to the roots of African photography. He makes portrait photographs and uses found photographs from the 1920s and ´30s. Around them he creates collages with all kinds of found materials and objects, including wood, metal, food tins and beer cans. He seeks to unite photography, painting and sculpture with one another.
Already at a very early age Sakho made his own toys, and framed his father´s work. He has a gallery dealing in authentic African objects. His work has been shown in various countries in Africa and Europe.
At the age of fourteen Fosso (b. Cameroon, 1962) already has begun to make self-portraits in his studio. By means of backdrops and props he transformed this into various imaginary surroundings. In these he himself played a different role each time, by putting on different costumes for each shot and assuming different poses. In Paris he made the series "Tati" to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the clothing store with the same name. On this occasion he played with Western clichés.
This was the first time that he had worked with assistants and make-up. At the age of ten Fosso moved to Bangui, the capital of the Central ASfrican Republic, where he has lived ever since. In 1975 he opened his own sudio, Studio National, and a year later his present studio, Studio Convenance. Since 1994 Fosso has attained international fame and his photographs are to be seen in important shows in Paris and London. That same year he won the Afrique and Création prize and in 1995 there was a survey exhibition of his work in the Centre National de la Photographie, Paris.
Depara (b. Angola/ d. Congo, 1928-1997) began photographing in 1950. He opened his studio, Jean Whisky Depara, in Kinshasa. He worked there until 1956 making portraits, family photographs and pictures of celebrations. In that time Kinshasa was a centre for music where rumba and cha-cha were played the whole night. Many people from West Africa came there to spend the night in the clubs and cafes. Depara mixed with the public as a photographer. He was famous for his love for women, whom he tried to seduce camera in hand. In addition he was a follower of the singer Franco, who had discovered his work and invited him to come along during a performance. In 1954 he became Franco´s official photographer.
Hands and feet are central to the work by Bâ (b. Mali, 1959). He is of the opinion that body parts are distinctive for the life of each individual: for instance, they say something about the work that he or she does. There is a great difference between the feet of a gardener and those of a rich merchant.
Bâ photographs details of everyday life in the Sahel: a close-up of a wrinkled old hand, the thumb and pointer of which hold prayer beads; a person sitting cross-legged, barefoot and with hands folded; a child´s hand grasping a bowl; a close-up of a baby´s hand; the soles of feet, painted with henna. With his work Bâ wants to give a positive picture of Africa, because television and newspapers in general only show the misery.
Bâ works for the Musée National du Mali, where he is responsible for recording the collection photographically. In addition he often goes out on missions to small villages in order to record the last vestiges of the culture of Mali for future generations.
Bâ is a photojournalist, trained in the Musée National in Mali. Since 1982 he has produced various reportages.
Strong, raw and perplexing images of daily life. Snapshots that move past like a film. A diary from the heart of Africa. Traoré (b. Mali, 1948) rides around on his Vespa through the city recording the intimacy of families. With his camera he follows the everyday scenes in the lives of these people: a man and a woman sleeping in bed, a girl putting on make-up, a child undressing for bed. In addition he photographs the nights in Bamako: the bars and the people on the streets. Nothing is re-enacted. The photos must speak for themselves. In a country where reportage rules the roost, Traoré represents a new form of expression, a personal, almost musical way of photographing.
Ahounou (b. Benin, 1963) photographs nude women in staged settings. The sensual form of the female is central: the light on the skin, the shape of the lips, and the folds in the veils that fall over the body. Generally the models turn their face away so they are not recognizable. Ahonou makes austere black and white photographs, and wants to stimulate the viewer to introspection, to lead him to discover an inner beauty by means of his photographs. He tries to brerak through the prevailing taboo on showing the nude in public. In this it is not his intention to shock. The photographs are not vulgar or banal, and his models generally well-to-do women.
In Arica the reactions are divergent: some praise his work for his subtle sense of eroticism; others want him to photograph the girls from the villages on Benin rather than wealthy women. Ahonou is a freelance journalist and, among other things, regular photographer for the Miss Benin contest.
Dago (b. Senegal, 1951) takes the woman as a subject for his photographs. He paints women with coloured earth, mud, carbon powder or orchil. Through this, the women´s skin appears to become stone, and she takes on the appearance of a sculpture. The nude is still taboo in Senegal. In order not to be recognized, the women in the photographs avert their faces.
In his country photography is primarily associated with reportage, weddings, family portraits, etc. In his photographs Dago unites painting and sculpture, and in this manner wants to demonstrate that photography has wider possibilities.
Dago studied at the Institute National des Beaux Arts in Dakar, and later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp.
Barthes (b. Réunion, 1957) makes polaroids of the island of Réunion, the French overseas department where he has lived since 1980. The photographs are colurful and of varying nature. He records the mystery of the world around him and transforms the exotic into fantasy by working over the photographs with acrylic paint, pen and other materials that he has available. The number of professional and itinerant photographers on Réunion rose when the island became an administrative department of France. In the 1960s there were studios and photo stores present in almost every city. A new generation of press photographers appeared in the 1970s. Creative photography was practised by talented amateur photographers and shown in various exhibitions.
The 1980s and ´90s were chracterized by an explosion in cultural and artistic activity. Collections were assembled by institutions and agencies, including the Departmental Archives, for which Barthes has been the official photographer since 1980.
Kasco (b. Ivory Coast, 1966) photographed the mentally ill in Abibjan. He first visited them without his camera and tried to learn to understand their way of living and manner of thinking. In Africa people often think that these people are possessed by a demon or a deity, and they are even driven out of some villages. They then travel to the city, where they are abandoned to their fate. Kasco photographed them in the gutter, sleeping on the street, screaming and walking around naked. Some knew taht they were being photographed and screamed at the photographer, or looked absently into the camera. Others were lost in theis own world and appear to be conscious of nothing. The photographs are confrontational; it is as if one has stepped into the world of these people. Kasco is interested in in the solidarity found in everyday life in Africa, and simply asks if one can speak of such solidarity when there are people wandering the street who, in other parts of the world, would receive care.
Kasco is the son of an ambassador. He has lived in various countries. He studied film and script-writing in France, and now lives in the Ivory Coast.
Rangel (b. Mozambique, 1942) photographs street scenes, landscapes, the everyday activities of individuals, and night scenes in the cafes and restaurants in Mozambique. His work testifies to his great involvement with the people of Mozambique's multicultural society. The photographs are pervaded by compassion for those portrayed and fury at injustices.
Many of his photographs were banned from publication by colonial censors, and many of his negatives were destroyed by servants of the previous government. Rangel worked some time for various newspapers. In 1970, together with four other journalists, he established the illustrated weekly magazine Tempo. This was the first colour magazine in Mozambique. in 1981 he became director of the weekly Domingo, and three years later he was asked to set up the Centro de Fotográfica in Maputo, a school for photography. He remains its director down to the present day.
Since 1983 Rangel has been showing in European galleries and various European and African museums.
There are hundreds of ethnic groups in Nigeria, each with its own language and traditions. Among other things which are part of these traditions are various hairstyles. These are determined by the social position of the family, and the artistic talent of the stylist. Among them there are special haistyles for ceremonies such as circumsicions, a woman's becoming an adult, or the celegbration of marriage. Today it is diffiicult to trace the backround of certain hairstyles because various ethnic groups have mixed together, and adapted to modern culture. Many hairstyles have died out, taking their secrets to the grave with them. Since 1968 Ojeikere (b. Nigeria, 1930) has been making photographs of various hairstyles he sees on the street or at work, or at celebrations.
He always asks his models where the hairstyle they are wearing comes from, what its meaning is, its name, and its history. In 1961 Ojeikere became the studio photographer for the first African television station. He opened his own studio in 1975, Foto Ojeikere. During an arts festival in 1968 he decided to begin photographing Nigerian cultural life. Since then he has travelled through the country in search of subjects. It was that same year he also began his "Hairstyles" series.
With the disappearance of French censorship on Madagascar an unprecedented freedom arose on the island for photographers. Many of them, including Men (b. Madagascar, 1954), left their studio and began making engaged work in which the reality of the society on the island was stripped bare. Men developed into a man of contrasts. Strong contrasts between black and white are characteristic of his work. He transforms parts of the everyday models he photographs into poetic visual statements.
Men is presently owner of three photo studios in Fianarantsoa. Since 1985 his work has been included in all sorts of exhibitions around the world. In 1994 he won the Mother Jones Award. Together with the photographer John Lieberberg he produced a large-scale reportage on the southwest of Madagascar. In 1994, together with photographer Bernard Descamps, he also published his first book, Gens de Tana. He began an extensive reportage on the village of Saotana in 1997.
Konaté (b. Bamako, 1959) began photographing on December 24, 1988, at 4:00 p.m., with a Zenit camera his younger brother brought back from Moscow. His first photographs were family snapshots that he made out of curiosity and for his own pleasure. When he also began to do photographs for others he decided to go into photography as a profession. He settled down to recording marriages, babtismal ceremonies and political events.
In his artistic work Konaté photographs details of bodies and objects : scars on a forehead, a child's mouth, the averted pupil of the eye, the end of a bone, a silver signet ring. He makes use of lightning effects to emphasize the texture of his subjects. Form and colour begin to lead a life of their own. From the moment that he began to turn his camera on details of objects, people thought he was crazy.
Konaté is the owner of Studio Kela Phox in Bamako.
In the field of photography, the Ghanaians have a long tradition of using painted backdrops. These are large canvasses which are used as backrounds for photographs. They could be painted with draped curtains, classic columns and stairways. In the 1940s art photographers broke these traditional images and designed alternatives which fit better with the taste of their public. They painted the backdrops with all sorts of aspects of the modernisation of Ghana: themes from urban life, dreamy images of houses, parks and airports. which symbolized modern life. They also paintd interiors in which could be found which the person posing in front of them fantasized having. Apagya (b. Ghana, 1958) too makes use of such backdrops, painted in bright colours. He places people into this set as though they are taking something out of the refridgerator, watching the television, or wandering through Manhattan. In this way he achieves lively studio portraits. He designs the backdrops himself and has them produced by a professional advertising artist.
