As part of the projection “ Movement ” by Luzphoto Agency during the Night of the Year, Nicola Lo Calzo presented an excerpt from his new series Cham .
CHAM is a photographic documentary which questions the legacy of the Black trade and slavery in the XXIth century.
CHAM Part 1 is the first part of this project dealing with Africa, Europe and the Americas, and has been developed in Benin and Ghana, two countries which hold a rich yet invisible “material and immaterial memory” of enslavement: descendants of families both enslaved and selling slaves, oral traditions, rituals both traditional and Christian, historical sites and architectures.
In Western Africa, slavery represents a past which is both morally and socially hard to accept. The narratives around these events are scarce as they generate much unease. Although the memory of those times has not disappeared, it has been integrated within alternative forms of narration.
In contrast to the predominant iconography around slavery, which often deals with the tangible built by the settlers, and which refers to a monolithic and static picture of this period of history, “Cham” explores another heritage, intangible, yet very little known by the public, historians and researchers, that of the individual and collective memory of the people involved in slave trade and colonial slavery.
The project enjoys the support from the following partners: The Committee for the Memory and the History of Slavery, 2011 L‘Année des Outre-mer, French Ministry of Culture, Le Conseil Général du Val-de-Marne, Afrique in Visu and LUZ photo agency. It is at the second stage of research which focuses on the Caribbean. The project will result in a traveling photo exhibition in France and abroad and a documentary photo book.
Nicola Lo Calzo is an Italian photographer, born in Turin in 1979. Initially trained as an architect, he began his artistic research in 2001. He works in the field of the documentary photography with a focus on minorities and human rights. He works with the press (Le Monde, La Stampa, il Corriere della Sera,…) and responds to public or private assignments (Ministère de la Culture française, Ministère de l’Outre-mer, Unesco, SFR Fondation, Alinari Fondation, …). His projects have been exhibited in France and abroad. Among the most representative exhibitions there are the International Festival of Photography Les Rencontres d’Arles , the Musée des Confluences and the Festival ImageSingulières . A major exhibition of his work “Morgante” was recently exhibited in MNAF Alinari National Museum of Photography in Florence. Nicola Lo Calzo lives and works in Paris.
