I love that even though I now spend my summers in Provence in an adorable house in the foothills of the Luberon I don’t have far to go to see good African art. The Photography Festival at Arles – Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles – is an hour away and this year South African artist and activist Zanele Muholi curated with artist Walead Beshty the exhibition Systemically open?New Forms of Production of the Contemporary Image, which among other artists showed her latest body of work Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail, the Dark Lioness).

I encountered Muholi’s work in 2009 in South Africa and met her in Bamako during the Rencontres de Bamako. She was just starting to get known internationally for her work on the LBGTI community. Already an activist she was speaking up for this community that was greatly suffering from hate crimes in South Africa and beyond. At the time she was getting attention for a body of work, the Miss D’vine series. She photographed black queens and drag artists set in an “African” landscape.

“The photos examine how gender and queer identities and bodies are shaped by – but also resist, through their very existence – dominant notions of what it means to be black and feminine”. (Zanele Muholi, 2009). This series was visually alluring and conceptually provocative. I fancied more her photographs of gay women in their own homes. I liked how she captured these quiet private moments with tenderness bringing the viewer into their private world.

Simultaneously she was already working on a long term project, the series Faces and Phases where she documents members of the South African LBGTI community. The work is very different formally. Color had been reduced to black and white. All theatricality had been removed in favor of a formal and deadpan approach. Intent on giving visibility to a community that has suffered from being invisible her focus is unwavering as she imbues the women with a pregnant dignity. This series has received much international attention and praise.

I was familiar with the body of work being shown at Arles– a work of self-portraiture – but I was not expecting the huge scale of the display. Installed in one of the recently renovated Ateliers of the Luma space Zanele had had some of her photographs printed the size of the huge walls. Wow! There was no way of avoiding her unflinching gaze.

In this new body of work she turns the camera on herself. The work is essentially autobiographical. Born in Umlazi, Durban to a working class family (her South African mother was South African domestic worker and her Malawian father a day laborer) Muholi was at first a hairstylist and factory worker before embracing fully her artistic career. There is a theatrical aspect to the work as she uses props, such as materials she created herself and found objects, clothe pins, scouring pads, various hats, wigs to name a few which reference her experiences. She plays with the color of her skin, most of the time darkening it, “reclaiming her darkness” she says.

Unlike Samuel Fosso or Cindy Sherman she is not pretending to be someone else. On the contrary she is making herself vulnerable by exposing aspects of herself and her history, which has been shaped by South African political, cultural and social history. It is as if she is play acting in front of the mirror like I remember doing when I was younger but with great vulnerability as she exposes herself to herself, and to all of us. The result is a multifaceted Zanele, increasingly hard to pinpoint and because of that, that much more fascinating and endearing. All the while she is forcing her audience, us, to confront our own discomfort with some of her uncompromising exposure. Read here a description of her process.

“I have embarked on a discomforting self-defining journey, rethinking the culture of the selfie, self-representation and self-expression. I have investigated how photographers can question and deal with the body as material or mix it with objects to further aestheticise black personhood. My abiding concern is, can photographers look at themselves and question whom they are in society and the positions that they hold, and maintain these roles thereafter? ( Somnyama Ngonyama, Zanele Muholi, Stevenson).

Zanele Muholi was a little tardy for a scheduled talk during the opening week of the Arles festival. She eventually appeared, slowly moving towards the panel like a queen . She had an amazing hairdo almost 8 inches high above her head. I just loved that hard won self-assurance. What a great example!

Read his article: Out of Adversity, Visions of Life

(note: may need NYTimes registration)

A few impressions:

Walking through the PanAfrican exhibition is to get a feel for the diversity of expressions, experiences, peoples, and landscapes of the African continent. No one genre dominates.

Landscapes are no longer sublime . Deceptively banal, silently empty, Jo Ratcliffe’s landscapes document the aftermath of war. Her method is subtle and quiet: Black and white images of the grassy underbrush are in fact mine fields left over from the war in Angola.

Bruno Hadjih ( Algeria/ Terra Incognita) views of the Sahara refute the western fantasy of the Sahara as a no man’s land of rolling sand dunes. Instead his images, close up views of roads that vanish into a nondescript distance highlight man’s intervention in the landscape. With this intimate view point which plants the viewer squarely on the road the Sahara becomes a place where humanity and nature coexist.  It is also an economic reality. Indeed for centuries the Sahara has been the main “highway” between West Africa and the Middle East.

As noted in the previous post, the environmental picture is not good but it does make for striking images. Uzoma Anyanwu (Nigeria/ Log Jam) photograph of a log jam on Lagos ‘ waterway framed in the distance by the local highway is effective in creating a powerful link between a modern way of life and the destruction of natural resources.

Charles Okereke ( Nigeria/The Canal People) opts for a closer look at this environmental catastrophe and creates beautiful still lives with jewel tones.The deceptive beauty of the close up of a discarded Fanta can, plastic mug and flip flop floating in murky water provokes an uncomfortable ambivalence as one wavers between the seductiveness of the image and distaste with its subject.

Moving in closer to capture the character of particular groups of people whose way of life is threatened by the pollution of the lakes, Abdoulaye Barry ( Tchad/ Night fishermen) photographed fishermen as they fished at night. Glimpses of faces emerge out of a total darkness. Keen in recreating his experience of working at night, the photographs were installed in a totally dark room.

The photographs of Jehad Nge of the Turkana people in Kenya feel somewhat more contrived. Also set in a total darkness that threatens to engulf them – a reference to their precarious status as their livelihood is threatened by terrible droughts – the Turkana people emerge somber, even despondent yet the beauty of their colorful cotton wraps and beaded necklaces strike a vibrant and uplifting tone.

Frankly disturbing, Daniel Naude‘s portraits of farm animals in South Africa are powerful and strangely unforgettable. I found myself at first reluctant to look at them and like them. Did I really want to look at a monumental sheep or bull that stares out, unflinching? Frankly I am more used to seeing these animals in a herd and at a distance. To my surprise,  captivated by their solemn presence I found myself coming back to look at them. The scale of the animals has been manipulated so that their presence dominates the landscape yet there is something desolate about them. Forced to acknowledge them I came to ponder their place in the precarious balance between man’s needs and nature.

More poetic, fanciful and dreamy are Bakary Emmanuel Daou’s ( Mali/Notre monde est -il durable?) photographs of a world of shadows and reflective light. Children inhabit discarded fridges and the ubiquitous plastic bag has now taken large proportions and become a source of light. It is useful to know that fridges are not as ubiquitous in Mali as they are here; they are symbols of today’s consumer society. On the other hand small plastic bags are used for everything, and once discarded litter the streets and present a real problem.

The exhibition of the photographic collection of Sindika Dokolo curated by Simon Njamii is a wonderful compliment to the exhibitions of contemporary photography. Besides providing a context to the contemporary exhibitions the selection of photographs held some amazing photographs from the early 1900’s that were generally unknown from most of us visitors. Anonymous portraits of residents of Saint Louis in Senegal, these photographs capture women in their homes and exhibit a wonderful mix of European and local taste. These photographic portraits fit within a long standing tradition since the mid 19th century, which had been learned from the French colonizers. In addition to capturing the identity of the sitter, these portraits document the way people decorated their walls. They also tell much about the role of photography as a way of recording and acknowledging family and lineage and the importance of the latter to the sitter’s identity. The photographs within the photograph are framed with European frames and seem to imitate the European painted portrait.

This concludes some of the highlights of the Biennale. As I was reviewing the show one last time before leaving Bamako for Paris I wondered who would be selected for Paris Photo. Next week blog will address that question.

African travel and art: Isabel S Wilcox is off to Mali with the Museum for African art to visit historical sites and artistic centers in up country Mali. The very knowledgeable, Jerry Vogel is guiding the group. A good stay in Bamako follows with the Photography Biennale being the main focus, then off to Paris for Paris Photo. Reports on the wonders of Mali will be forthcoming.