AfricaIs aCountry

Rainer Elstermanns' "Photo Studio"

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Rainer Elstermanns' "Photo Studio"

By
Sean Jacobs

[slideshow]

The German photographer, Rainer Elstermanns, imagined an old photo studio set in rural Kenya in his studio in Berlin. He dressed models in period costumes.  The result is a 17-minute film and a series of 40 recreations.  Elstermann writes that he was inspired by the work of the great African photographers and artists, Samuel Fosso and Malick Sidibe, as well as the American photographer, Irving Penn.

The result was exhibited in The Netherlands until earlier this week. (I am assuming it will come to the US soon.)

Information and more photographs: Here, here and here.

— Sean Jacobs

Further Reading

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In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.