Posts Tagged ‘Africa’

Flak Photo x Zwelethu Mthethwa book giveaway!

Posted by Danielle on Friday, July 30th, 2010

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Remember when I wrote about South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa’s new exhibit at the Studio Museum in Harlem last Friday? Well, in related news, the online photo magazine Flak Photo and the nonprofit photography foundation Aperture are teaming up to give away copies of Mthethwa’s eponymous monograph to three lucky readers via Facebook. The rules are fairly straight forward:

Step 1: Go to Flak Photo and pick your favorite photo from their archive of featured photographers.

Step 2: Copy and paste the link of the photo to the comments section of Flak Photo’s Facebook page by August 1 (that’s THIS Sunday).

Step 3: Wait with bated breath to see if you’re one of the randomly chosen winners.

Now go forth and browse. Good luck!

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Posted in Art, Contests, Photography | 1 Comment »

Zwelethu Mthethwa x Studio Museum

Posted by Danielle on Friday, July 23rd, 2010

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Untitled, 2001, Zwelethu Mthethwa

This is exciting news: South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa will be showing work at the Studio Museum in Harlem now through October 24. His exhibit, Inner Views,  opened last Thursday and I cannot wait to take a bus trip to see it in person. I first came across Mthethwa’s work at SFMoMA in 2007, just a few months before I moved to Baltimore for grad school.

I love that he simply documents life in various neighborhoods around Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa, without relying on what Okwui Enwezor, dean of academic affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute coins “Afro-Pessism”, which he explains further:

Before foreclosing the effectiveness of photography or to ask whether we have reached the end of photography, we should address the diverse manifestations of photography in societies in transition where its powerful effects of seeing is constantly battling different logics and apparatuses of opacity. All through the years of apartheid, photography was at the center of this battle between transparency and opacity, thus lending the medium a far more discursive possibility than it would have enjoyed as purely an instrument of art. One can in fact, argue, pace Georges Didi-Huberman, that in the context of apartheid photography was an instrument of cogito.

In South Africa, for the critics of documentary realism or anthropological realism, especially black artists such as Mthethwa, documentary realism was always at the ready to link the iconic and the impoverished with little recourse to examining its spectral effects on social lives. Because of this, documentary realism generated an iconographic landscape that trafficked in simplifications, in which moral truths were posited without the benefit of proven ethical engagement.”

Have a great weekend.

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Posted in Photography | 2 Comments »

Andrew Dosunmu x The African Game

Posted by Danielle on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

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Since we’re in the thick of the World Cup, I thought it would only be appropriate to highlight The African Game, a book dedicated to Africans’ passion for football (a.k.a. soccer) by Nigerian-born photographer and filmmaker Andrew Dosunmu. From the publishers:

The African Game is a unique vision of the continent as documented by Nigerian photographer and filmmaker Andrew Dosunmu. Punctuated with vivid essays by journalist Knox Robinson, The African Game looks to soccer as a way to explore modern African life, culture, and identity. A compelling, on-the-ground depiction of Africa’s passion for soccer, this book is the first look at the rich sporting culture that has produced some of professional soccer’s biggest and highest-paid stars. The African Game will be a definitive resource during this summer’s World Cup, which will show the continent’s players emerging as some of the game’s best—as we look to South Africa as the host of the 2010 World Cup. As these pioneers change the way the game is played—and the way we think about the sport itself—The African Game provides crucial back-story and documents the soccer mania that has gripped the entire continent.

Like a film artfully moving through its plot, The African Game follows a narrative of the sport in Cameroon, Senegal, Togo, Cote D’Ivoire, Angola, Ghana, Tunisia, and Egypt by exploring its resonance at all levels of the culture, from national team sponsorship to the unmistakable street style that Africa’s soccer mania inspires. The African Game mixes classic portraiture and gripping reportage-style photography to frame Africa, its sporting heritage, and its everyday vibrancy in a way that is rarely seen—Africa as it actually exists, not as we imagine it to be. With imagistic essays framed by vital facts and stats about each team, The African Game will not only be an indispensable resource in the months leading up to the 2010 World Cup—it will be an unprecedented document of the sport and its place at the center of African popular culture.

Pick up a copy here.

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Posted in Photography | 1 Comment »

Middle classes in Africa

Posted by Danielle on Thursday, June 10th, 2010

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“Businessmen”, Abidjan, Ivory Coast

Photo by Joan Bardeletti

Middle Classes in Africa—the name pretty much sums it all up. Back in 2008, documentary photographer Joan Bardeletti decided to document the lives of the middle class people in six African countries over the course of 20 months. His goals are to “present a new but realistic vision of Africa” and “explore new ways of associating photo essay and classical research work.” So far, the project has taken him to the Ivory Coast, Kenya, and Mozambique, and he has produced intimate photographs of middle class life in those countries.

Given that it is a two-year project, this, of course, cannot serve as a comprehensive survey of what it means to be in the middle class in these countries. But it can and does serve as a stepping stone towards thinking about Africa not as a monolith, but as a diverse continent of different countries and cultures that is in a constant state of flux. And it also serves as a great companion to African Lens, which I wrote about before.

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Posted in Photography | 1 Comment »

African Lens

Posted by Danielle on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

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Bujumbura children playing, Burundi, photo by David Rizzi

I came across a new website that is definitely worth a look-see: African Lens.

The dominant representation of Africa today is one of war, poverty, disease and everything that can go wrong with humanity. It is famously referred to as the “forgotten continent”.  African Lens is designed as a platform to document and present a visual Africa in an unbiased way . It is also a medium to showcase different aspects of our every day lives and serve as an advocate to compelling stories that need to be told. Content will be generated from everywhere – from the established photojournalist to user contributions. Please feel free to ping us if you have something interesting to share!

Our goal is to present a visual representation of Africa to offer a different perspective to the status quo through powerful photography, videos and essays.

The website is inspired by the New York Times’ Lens blog and Pictory. It also follows the tradition of GOOD magazine’s reader-submitted photo essays. I’m looking forward to seeing how African Lens grows and evolves.

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Posted in Photography | 2 Comments »

Pop’Africana

Posted by Danielle on Thursday, May 27th, 2010

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I think I’m in love. I recently stumbled across Pop’Africana, a new fashion/art magazine with a focus on Africa and the African Diaspora whose first issue launched last month.

Also, it is very difficult to find images of Africans and people of African descent in style, fashion, and art publications. And when those images are there, they are usually exoticized, the subject’s Otherness played to the absolute hilt. Not to mention that magazines that were dedicated to black and brown denizens of style were shuttered after sadly short runs (i.e., Vibe Vixen and Suede).

It is quite refreshing to see Oroma Elewa the magazine’s founder and a wonderful photographer in her own right, dedicate herself to increasing the visibility of Africans in the fields of art, design, fashion, and photography. It’s definitely not easy to start a print publication in a media environment where magazines and newspapers are folding on a regular basis and it’s inspiring to see the passion and drive fueling this project. It is rare to read and see people from the Diaspora highlighted and celebrated instead of ignored or exoticized, so I’m excited to see the results. Not to mention that it’s just a real treat to see such sumptuous images and creative design choices; something truly original.

For more information on Pop’Africana, visit its editor’s blog (chock full of beautiful photos and musings from Elewa), Twitter and Facebook pages. (Phew!)

Stay tuned. As soon as my copy comes in the mail, I will share a few choice selections here.

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Posted in Photography, Publishing, Writing | No Comments »