adminphotography which provides a mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar post-colonial affectations.
In an exhibition entitled “Everyone Feels Beautiful”, the works are both visual and conversational images of African leadership, sailors, sports and political heroes, and a re-invented exoticism of colonial Africa, dating from as early as 1970-2009,
Samuel Fosso was born in Cameroon, then lived in Nigeria as a child but was forced to leave at the end of the Biafran war in 1972.
He moved to Bangui, in the Central African Republic, where he found work as an assistant photographer.
Six months later, aged 13, he opened his own photographic portrait studio.
Fosso started taking self-portraits to send to his mother in Nigeria, whom he had left behind as a refugee. Although his initial aim was to show he was alive and well, his interest in exploring the genre grew steadily, and he experimented with new techniques and poses.
Fosso’s work has been published around the world, and shown in major global venues such as the Photographers Gallery, London, and the Guggenheim Museum, New York.
La Bourgeoise, La Marin, Le Chef, and his series of provocative politicians’ autopotraits, tackle subject matter which is usually considered sacrosanct.
He investigates African modernism, post-colonialism and sapeurism.
The artist impersonates and photographs himself as portraiture of African leaders from Mobutu Sese Seko, Samora Machel, Kwame Nkrumah, to boxing legend Muhammad Ali, and other formidable characters from pan-African history.
His works salvage memories of Africa’s liberation struggles of the 1950s to the early 1990s, and the highly virulent issues of the times. Confronting Africa’s colonial past, in the form of photography, his works become both historical, satirical deconstructions of notions of power.
Photography is the artist’s vehicle to penetrate the realm of Africa’s past charismatic leaders and dictators, some of whom stood both for liberation and oppression simultaneously and others who stood resolute in their quest for total African empowerment and independence.
It is a thought-provoking and highly literate yet enjoyable and refreshing photographic exhibition — which all patrons, art, film and design students, photographers, graphic artists, advertising creatives and image designers should view.
The show was supported by the Alliance Francaise and the French Embassy.
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