Overview

A rich examination of the role of portrait photography in the construction of Africa as a political idea At a moment of profound change marked by decolonization and the Civil Rights period of the mid-twentieth century, photographers across Africa and the African diaspora used the photographic portrait in order to fuel incipient ideas of Africa. Published in conjunction with a groundbreaking exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination charts international histories of resistance and liberation up to the present day in order to contend with the construction of Africa as a political idea, and the tools that artists used to forge it. Featuring more than a hundred photographs by renowned artists of the time, such as Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé, and Jean Depara, and by contemporary artists of African descent, such as Samuel Fosso, Silvia Rosi, and Njideka Akunyili-Crosby, this richly illustrated publication explores modes of Pan-African possibility in powerful images of everyday people, where the personal was undeniably political. With an introduction by curator Oluremi C. Onabanjo, excerpts from landmark texts by V. Y. Mudimbe and Brent Hayes Edwards, and a conversation between Yasmina Price and Momtaza Mehri, Ideas of Africa highlights the potential of the photographic portrait as both a creative endeavor and political mechanism.

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9781633451711

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Oluremi C. Onabanjo is the Peter Schub Curator of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Brent Hayes Edwards is a professor of African American and theories of the African diaspora at Columbia University, New York. Momtaza Mehri is a Somali-British poet and essayist. V.Y. Mudimbe is a Congolese philosopher, author, and the Newman Ivey White Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Literature at Trinity College, Duke University, Durham. Yasmina Price is a writer, researcher, and PhD student in the Departments of African American Studies and Film & Media Studies at Yale University, New Haven.

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