Steidl recently published a book compiling three years of research by Artur Walther into African photography. The conversation joins the representation inherited from an ethnographic tradition with local contributions, combining 19th century anthropological studies with older and contemporary social reporting. The portrait plays a major role. One of the central pieces of this historical selection is Santu Mofokeng’s The Black Photo Album, along with a large sampling of contemporary photographers, Samuel Fosso’s portraits with ironic captions, Pieter Hugo’s digitally colored faces, Guy Tilim’s portraits of the Mai Mai militia in the DRC, Zanale Muholi’s portraits of the South African gay community, and David Goldblatt’s involuntarily ethnographic gallery. Supplemented with historical and aesthetic essays by thirteen professors and curators, the photographs in the book and exhibition reveal the complexity of the question of representation in African photography.
Read the full article on the French version of Le Journal.
Laurence Cornet
Book :
Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive
African Photography from the Walther collection
Edited by Tamar Garb
Coédition The Walther Collection/Steidl
352 pages, 215 tritone plates
68.00 EUR
Exhibition :
Distance and Desire:
Encounters with the African Archive
June 8, 2013 – May 17, 2015
Reichenauerstr. 21
89233 Neu-Ulm/Burlafingen
Germany
T +49 731 176 9143
