An exhibition full of evocative images shows Africa as seen by African photographers, reports Alex Dodd
>From its earliest days photography has been a dangerous medium. Since its inception last century, photographic images of Africa have mainly served to bolster Western perceptions of this continent as a messy tangle of jungle, starvation, exoticism, ignorance, weakness and ego-mania.
Brace yourselves then for a magnificent retrospective body of images by African photographers that stands as a rich reclamation of the soul and substance of this continent.
Writing about the photographic documentation of European colonies in Africa, Nicholas Monti notes in Africa Then: Photographs, 1840-1918 that “the authorities who commissioned and financed a good part of the first photographic campaigns were, it seems, aware of the risk of `natives’ getting possession of this means of expression and using it as an instrument of subversion by showing the true conditions of the people”.
It’s taken almost 100 years for those authorities’ worst nightmares to come true with the opening on December 19 of eye Africa: African Photography 1840- 1998. It is the most extensive exhibition in history of images by Africans, of Africans, about Africa from all over the continent – from Dakar to Addis Ababa, from Bamako to Cape Town.
This exhibition is a bright and bold departure from African photography’s colonial legacy. From “tens of millions of postcards produced in the 19th century to sate Europe’s appetite for exotic, colonised peoples as specimens of curiosity” to Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl’s staged documentaries among the Nuba people in 1970s, Africa and her people have most often been the subject of the West’s ethnographic lens. Rather than raising a fist or a scream in response to Western stereotypes and misconceptions, the eye Africa images discard this continent’s victim role by simply outshining the visual fictions of the colonial gaze.
The exhibition is the result of seven years of investigation into and celebration of African photography by the brilliantly inventive Paris-based cultural journal Revue Noire.
“What if other distant cultures that we see as exotic were just the same over there as those here, just as modern and urban?” reads one of the publications’ blurbs in its signature quirky and expansive use of the English language. “A different skin colour and an accent are not enough to qualify foreign countries any more: cosmopolitan cities have changed notions of territory and blood ties to form a constantly evolving fraternity.”
Acutely conscious of the still-raw bruises inflicted by colonialism, the Revue Noire team is careful and disciplined in its curatorial approach. Never prescriptive or sanctimonious, every edition is as rare and juicy as a pomegranate, delighting in the modernity and contradictions abundant in contemporary African culture.
Revue Noire is about believing in tomorrow’s world through the works of photographers, artists, sculptors, filmmakers, musicians, designers and writers from Africa, the Caribbean and the major cities of the African Diaspora. Each of its quarterly editions deals with a country, a group of countries or a theme. “Every time we go to a country we have somebody focusing on photography,” explains Pierre-Laurent Sanner, Revue Noire’s man in Cape Town who has coordinated the current show. “Our aim is not to be the final exploration of African photography. It is the opposite of that.” Much work remains unearthed or unexhibited.
The 350 images that will be on show at the South African National Gallery (SANG)and the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town have come to us fresh from the Sao Paolo Biennale in Brazil and the Maison Europene de la Photographie in Paris, and are headed for the Barbican in London and the Kennedy Centre and Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC.
The exhibition has been structured around five seminal themes, from the earliest years of the introduction of the camera to Africa to the photojournalistic work of the post- colonial era and the more experimental contemporary work.
A section titled The precursors paint the portrait features the portraiture of photographers like Mama Casset from Senegal and Cornelius Augustt Azaglo from the Ivory Coast dating from the 1950s to the 1980s.
The reporting years of the Sixties: Independence, official photos and the lightheartedness of freedom is a section featuring the work of South Africa’s Billy Monk, Mozambique’s Ricardo Rangel and Zaire’s Oscar Mbemba among others. South Africans like Omar Badsha, Gideon Mendel and Peter Magubane feature strongly in the committed photography category along with photographers from Angola, Mozambique, Mali, Zaire and the Ivory Coast.
Then there’s research photography featuring Santu Mofokeng and David Goldblatt alongside Pierrot Men from Madagascar and Elise Fitte-Duval from Martinique. Photographers of the Diaspora features work from the United States, Haiti, UK, France and Cuba.
The historical component (1887-1960) will be housed at the SANG, while the modern and contemporary work will be on show at the Castle, William Fehr Collection, B Block. Video portraits of several of the exhibiting photographers shot by African filmmakers will also be screened.
The exhibition will be opened on Saturday December 19 at 11am at the SANG and at 1pm at the Castle. Ambassador to the Delegation of the European Commission in South Africa Michael Laidler and Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology Lionel Mtshali will be speaking at the opening.
To move beyond the exclusivity of gallery-bound art and to take the images to a wider public, a selection of photographs will be reproduced and laminated to be exhibited in the St George’s Mall walkway and in the Gardens leading to the SANG and the Michaelis Gallery at the University of Cape Town.
Apart from the main body of work, eye Africa will also feature several satellite shows in galleries around town. Check the programme for shows by some of South Africa’s most startling photographers: Lance Slabbert, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Darryl Evans, Bobby Bobson, Dave Southwood, Julia Tiffin, Mark Lewis and Adam Weltz.
The show also features public discussions and innovative workshops exploring the theme “Africa through our own eyes”.
Images from the workshops will be on exhibition at Green Market Square from January 20 to February 15 and the most talented young photographer will receive an award and a camera.
In this way, the exhibition that places such a heavy emphasis on the history of African photography will also have some bearing on its future.