"CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE WALTHER COLLECTION – EVENTS OF THE SELF: PORTRAITURE AND SOCIAL IDENTITY" par Okwui ENWEZOR. Editions Steidl, Göttingen. 2010. Edition originale. Imprimé en Allemagne. Fort in-4, couverture toilée grise sous jaquette photo. 448 pages. Textes bilingues Anglais/Allemand de Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, Okwui Enwezor, Willis E. Hartshorn, Virginia Heckert, Kobena Mercer, Santu Mofokeng, Chika Okeke-Agulu et Deborah Willis, illustré de très nombreuses reproductions photographiques noir & blanc et couleurs, pleine page pour la plupart, par Sammy Baloji, Oladélé Ajiboyé Bamgboyé, Yto Barrada, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Candice Breitz, Allan deSouza, Theo Eshetu, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Samuel Fosso, David Goldblatt, Kay Hassan, Romuald Hazoumè, Pieter Hugo, Seydou Keïta, Maha Maamoun, Boubacar Touré Mandémory, Salem Mekuria, Santu Mofokeng, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Zanele Muholi, James Muriuki, Ingrid Mwangi, Grace Ndiritu, J. D. 'Okhai Ojeikere, Jo Ractliffe, August Sander, Berni Searle, Malick Sidibé, Mikhael Subotzky, Guy Tillim, Hentie van der Merwe, and Nontsikelelo (Lolo) Veleko.

 

"…Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity offers an extensive account of modern and contemporary African photography in the Walther Collection. The exhibition, comprising thirty-two photographers, also includes the extensive portrait series by August Sander and three groups of typologies of post-industrial structures by Bernd and Hilla Becher. This account is generally focused on works that are conceptual, performative, and non-documentary in nature, and derive from the period between the mid-1920s and more recent contemporary work. An important cornerstone of the exhibition revolves around the portraits of Sander and Keïta, with four galleries dedicated to more than one hundred images by these two photographers alone. There is also an expansive overview covering modern and contemporary African photography and video. This part of the collection constitutes the most comprehensive holding of its kind. It represents the work of three generations of African artists and photographers, and cuts across colonial and postcolonial histories of Africa in the twentieth century between the 1940s and the 1990s to the recent sweeping reforms of globalization in the twenty-first century. Each of the periods covered in the collection illuminates not only the changing features of African societies as they moved from colonization to decolonization, but also reflects the changed contexts of the formal application of photography in documenting the structural and cultural transformations reshaping individual and collective subjectivities…" Okwui Enwezor.

 

Ref LPB1220