The fourth edition of the PORTRAIT(S) festival of Vichy opens its doors today. Until September 4th Vichy is an outpost of today’s photography for a season and is presenting to the public some exhibitions centered exclusively around the art of the portrait. This new edition is showing nine artists whose exhibitions are taking place simultaneously in the city centre and outside it, in the open air. L’Oeil de la Photographie brings you the work of one photographer from the programme every day. Today, focus on « Le Kinshasa de Depara » by Jean Depara.
Born in Angola, Jean Depara moved in the 1950s to Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, where he very soon became one of the most visible photographers in the city. After working for a while as a scrap metal dealer and a bicycle and camera repairman, he set up a studio called “Jean ‘Whisky’ Depara”, soon to be frequented by all the young people of Kinshasa. When not taking portraits of beauties in puffy skirts and swashbucklers in cowboy boots, he scoured the city bars – the Kwist, the Ok Ba, the Sarma Congo – and snapped people leaving the fashionable nightclubs – the Afro Mogenbo, the Champs-Élysées or the Djambo Djambu – where with his flash slung over his shoulder he shot evening beauties draped like silken flowers on the hoods of cars, flirting with their one-night stands in tight-fitting blouses. All the carefree energy of these young night-owls bubbles out of Jean Depara’s exciting photographs. Everything seems decorative, but nothing is. The sunglasses, the paste necklaces, the satin dance shoes, the three-buttoned vests are all tangible signs of social success, trademarks of appearance, barometers of a system of values invented by the SAPE (Society of Atmospherists and Elegant Personalities). The photographer is the privileged witness of this great parade, the message-bearer of this flaunted prosperity, and above all the accomplice of a crazy kind of freedom. With Jean Depara’s lens peering at them, they don’t let themselves get embarrassed by any taboo: they just wrap their arms around each other and kiss, right on the mouth, show off their best profiles, stick out their chests, knock back their beers, twist around on the sidewalk. In reality, these black and white images are rich in colour. They are as much a reflection of a carefree young people living the rhythm of the rumba and the cha-cha-cha as they are a vibrant testimony to the good times in Kinshasa, which novelist Achille Ngoye back then baptized “Kin-joy, Kin-madness”.
After being forgotten for over twenty years, Jean Depara was rediscovered in 1996 as a result of the research on African photography carried out by Revue Noire and Jean-Loup Pivin.
FESTIVAL
PORTRAIT(S)
From June 10th to September 4th, 2016
Le Kinshasa de Depara
Jean Depara
Centre Culturel Valery-Larbaud
03200 Vichy
France
https://www.ville-vichy.fr/agenda/festival-portraits-2016
