African Photography at the Grand Palais

The fifteenth edition of Paris-Photo was held for the first time at the Grand Palais, a grand Beaux Arts building remarkable for its iron, steel, and glass barrel vaulted roof.  This new location for the fair, which was previously underground in the Carrousel du Louvre, is best adapted to the fair’s status as the most prestigious fair in the international photographic calendar. Well over 100 galleries from 23 countries participated along with several publishing houses selling photo books.

Julien Frydman, former director of Magnum Paris was the new director of the fair. Intent on not sidelining documentary photography as an insular art form, Frydman gave it a prominent place. Indeed, the fair offered a mixture of photography as contemporary art with its conceptual bias, and a substantial showing of historical and documentary photography.

Traditionally this fair adopts a main geographic focus. This year, Africa was given the place of honor with photographs from a new generation of African artists selected from the Bamako Encounters in Mali and a carefully curated exhibition of portraiture from the Artur Walther private collection of contemporary photography. In the galleries, African historical photography was extensively represented with works by Malick Sidibe, Seydou Keita, Jean Depara, and Oumar Ly while the more contemporary manifestations were more limited and mainly of the documentary kind. The result was an overall conservative showing and not fully representative of the range that currently exists in African photography.

My first impulse was to check out the selection from The Bamako Encounters.  I noticed an effort to temper the overall documentary tenor of the exhibition in Mali and its emphasis on ravaged communities and landscapes.  Among the photographs of the 12 artists chosen were Husain and Hasan Essop’s conceptual images of a society where conflicting cultural and religion agendas coexists precariously,  Mohamed Camara’s personal musings and Baudouin Mouanda‘s snapshots of Congolese sapeurs/dandies. Besides Ouedraogo’s photographs of Accra’s electronic wastelands the theme was generally inferred more than explicit.  Somewhat unfortunate was the location of the Bamako section. Set to the side of the fair behind the publishing booths it could be overloked.

Better situated  and set amidst the main galleries, the installation of the Private Collection of Artur Walther was very successful.  The installation, which was curated by Okwui Enwezor, was structured around distinct groupings, which highlighted the conceptual component and the serial quality of some of the artists’ photographic work. I lingered in front of Okhai Ojeikere’s hairstyle series, which document an aspect of Nigerian culture.  Seen as a group they looked phenomenal and the systematic aspect of Ojeikere’s process was made evident. The hairdos are seen more as an art form; they become abstract shapes and look sculptural.
Samuel Fosso’s self-portrait project where he stands in for black cultural icons such as Angela Davis, Haile Selassie, Miles Davies, Muhammad Ali was another great series. I find it fascinating that he runs a portrait and passport shop in Bangui (C.A.R) and nobody in his vicinity knows that he does this other kind of work, or that he has an international following.  I was pleased to see the color saturated portraits of “Miss D’vine” by Zanele Muholi who explores the conceptual power of portraiture to address issues of gender, race, and colonialism. In the context of South Africa where homosexuality is unacceptable, when first exhibited, these images of a drag queen dressed in drag or tribal dress and set in the African bush were seen as highly provocative and politically potent. Berni Searle ‘s photographic installation – a composite of photographs of parts of the palm of a hand – forces the viewer to see the life lines of a slightly discolored black hand through the modernist grid thereby highlighting the post-colonial dynamics.
Notwithstanding the obvious contemporary focus here of the selection, the inclusion of some vintage photographs of the 19th century provided a historical basis for this contemporary manifestation.
Implicit in the inclusion of Walther’s collection was the part he plays as an example in the field of collecting, thereby conveying to African photography further legitimacy as a collectible item.

I then proceeded to walk through the main part of the fair taking in its broad international offerings, and I was most of the time amazed of how often I did not recognize the names of the contemporary photographers on view.  Indeed the European market for contemporary photography is quite different from the American one. Getting back to my focus, I came back on my steps for a closer look at the material relating to Africa that was included in the galleries’ showings. I realized that only 20% of the galleries had addressed the theme.  With the exception of the two South African galleries whose selection was contemporary, the majority of them had favored historical material.  A long stop at the booth of La Revue Noire was truly rewarding with its mix of historical figures such as Jean Depara who is having his first retrospective at the Revue Noire’s gallery and more contemporary artists such as Alain Polo and Joel Andrianomearisoa, who are both more conceptual in their approach. Oumar Ly, whose work of the 1960’s and 70’s was recently discovered, had a whole wall at Les Filles du Calvaire.  Walking through this fair, I had the sense that a case for a history of African photography was being made. Pascal Martin Saint Leon, director of The Revue Noire summarized it well when he said : “ l’histoire de la photo Africaine se construit au jour le jour.” And indeed it is by going through photographic archives and making prints that this history is being put together bit by bit.
I was pleased to see that Viviane Sassen had a prominent place at the Stevenson’s gallery.  She is getting a lot of attention: she was included in MOMA’s New Photography exhibition this year. While she now lives in Europe and is not African, she lived in Kenya as a young girl and her photos deal with her memories of those years. However contemporary examples were overall few amidst the galleries and while David Goldblatt was given fair representation, more of his recent work could have been included.

Malick Sidibe was honored at this fair and decorated officer of Arts and Letters. When asked to share his thoughts on the fair he recommended that young photographers resist copying others and focus on making photography that speaks to their African sisters and brothers. Sound advice and yet few Africans buy photography. Non African public and private collectors are almost the sole purchasers of these works.