Post by Olufemi Terry (text) and Marco Lachi (photographs)
In 2008, while living and studying in Cape Town, I heard, over and over, two observations about the city: it was a place of singular beauty, perhaps even the world’s most captivating city. Visitor and local alike seemed incapable of seeing other landscapes than the physical one, and some claimed that the city’s insularity was a result of the mystical, domineering influence of Table Mountain. The second perception, loosely related to the first, was that Cape Town was not an African city or, at least, not a “real African city.”
Cape Town: Beautiful Ugly
April 6, 2012 By 9 Comments
If Africa really is “a country” …
April 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment
From a reader:
If Africa really is “a country” for many Americans, then that country is somewhere few outside the military have even heard of … Djibouti: AFRICOM (much of it apparently run out of a rural base here in Britain), drones-ville, the only Japanese military base in the world outside Japan, the EU’s anti-pirates clogging up the port, luxury swimming pools and bars. Throw in the Chinese Navy, mix with the still-smouldering fag-ends of the French empire, all sorts of private military outfits now cashing-in on the anti-pirate boat-protection (insurance) racket, some significant slices of both Somali and Dubai capital, add the entirety of Ethiopia’s imports thundering the place … stir at 40o celsius.
[Read more...]
Disco Angola (in New York City)
April 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Stan Douglas. "A Luta Continua, 1974" (2012)
The photographer Stan Douglas’s new project “Disco Angola,” a work in progress, is on display at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York until April 28, 2012. The New Yorker announced the show in Goings on About Town with the image above. What’s amazing is that Douglas has not been to Angola, though from what I read in this interview with Monica Szewczyk he has done a good bit of studying up. [Read more...]
Cheikh Amadou Bamba Day
April 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment
For over two decades, West African Muslims from the Murid Sufi Brotherhood come together at the annual Cheikh Amadou Bamba Day march in Harlem, New York. Scholar Zain Abdullah calls it “a major site where they redefine the boundaries of their African identities, cope with the stigma of blackness, and counteract an anti-Muslim backlash”. Mamadou Diouf (in his preface to ‘A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal’) considers Bamba’s message an “unfinished prophecy”. Above and below are photographs Marguerite Seger took during the parade in July 2010.* [Read more...]
My favorite photographs N°2: Scott Williams
March 29, 2012 By 2 Comments
Westridge. Mitchells Plain
South African photographer Scott Williams is the second guest in our new weekly series. He has, he says, masqueraded as a freelance photographer during his lunchtimes and after-hours for some eight years. “I love to document the unseen, positive part of the Cape Town hip hop scene. The ‘underground’ (a dirty word), as it were. In the future, I’m planning to focus even more on Park Jams (free hip hop events held in communities) because I enjoy the thrill of a raw performance and the reaction of parents, friends, neighbours to their artists’ hidden talents.” More of Scott’s work can be found at nar8iv.tumblr.com and on his flickr page. Along with his 5 favorite photographs, he sent us some words: [Read more...]
Nothing to Lose? The art of Rotimi Fani-Kayode
March 28, 2012 By 2 Comments
Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s first solo show in New York opened last week. The British-Nigerian artist’s last works, large photographs of the naked male body, are on display at the Walther Collection in New York City. These are images of rites which explore the artist’s familial background as keepers of the shrine in Ife, Nigeria, and the artist’s status as liminoid. Fani-Kayode’s interest in Yoruba ‘techniques of ecstasy’ is juxtaposed against a sombre thinking into sexuality, race, and religion, as discourses of the body. [Read more...]
Paolo Patrizi’s photographs of ‘shrines to the shortcomings of globalization’
March 24, 2012 By 2 Comments
Tomorrow’s Marching Band
March 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment
In the DRC, city life isn’t foremost defined by the image of the child soldier (contrary to what some campaigns would have you believe) but rather by that of the street child. Seen by many as a superfluous presence, a residue or a waste, street children become easy victims of gossip and accusations while at the same time, as a relatively new phenomenon, they are also hard to explain (children weren’t always used as scapegoats for families falling apart let alone considered as the cause of personal illnesses), ultimately turning into something of a danger and a threat that, according to all too many citizens, needs to be dealt with and ideally removed from the stuttering and improvisational city logics. [Read more...]
‘Maasai Cricket Warriors’
March 16, 2012 By 11 Comments
The Maasai bear the weight of being one of the original noble savage dream tribals that the British and the Germans salivated over (in India, the Sikhs play the role of the exotic, animal protein-loving warriors, whose aggression got recruited into the Crown’s loyal service). The Maasai are such a standard-bearing cipher for all that ‘modernity’ regards as unadulterated, wild masculinity that a recurrent news story in Northern Euro/Brit tabloids is one where some random white European woman visits East Africa, meets the fabulousness that is the Maasai/Samburu warrior, and takes him back to her cold homeland. Then, there’s the inevitable photo of him bagging groceries at the local Aldi or Tesco (and his whole masculine juju is gone.) But here’s something different: the British newspaper The Telegraph, and US magazine The Atlantic (online) are running photographic galleries of strapping “Maasai Warriors” in full beads-and-braids regalia playing cricket. [Read more...]
My favorite photographs N°1: Zachary Rosen
March 15, 2012 By 5 Comments
Katse Kombi
We’re starting a new weekly series today. We ask photographers who make portraits of African subjects to introduce us to their work. Basically they pick their five favorite photographs, describe the subject matter, what brought them to the image and what kind of mood they were trying to capture. Our first guest is Zachary Rosen, an American documentary photographer who has worked in The Gambia and Lesotho as a Peace Corps Volunteer. His photos live at zacharyrosen.com and he blogs (occasionally) here.
