Africa Is a Country

'Emerging' Photographers

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

'Emerging' Photographers

By
Tom Devriendt

Paris Photo will celebrate its 15th anniversary at the Grand Palais this year. With a “Place of honour for Africa (…) From Bamako to Cape Town.”  This focus on Africa follows focuses on “Germany, the Netherlands, Mexico, Switzerland, Spain, the Nordic Countries, Italy, Japan, the Middle East and central Europe.”

Les Rencontres de Bamako exhibits the work of Abdoulaye Barry (Chad), Mohamed Camara (that’s a photo from his Souvenirs series above), Fatoumata Diabate (Mali), Husain and Hasan Essop and Zanele Muholi (South Africa), Uche Okpa-Iroha (Nigeria), Jehad Nga (Kenya/Libya), Nyani Quarmyne (Ghana), Arturo Bibang (Equatorial Guinea), Baudouin Mouanda (Congo-Brazzaville), Nyaba Ouedraogo and Nestor Da (Burkina Faso). Because there’s only so many African photographers to choose from these days all of them seemingly caught in a perpetual state of “emergence” –even if they’ve been around for years.

Les Rencontres de Bamako runs from 1 November 2011 to 1 January 2012.

Further Reading

How to unmake the world

In this wide-ranging conversation, para-disciplinary artist Nolan Oswald Dennis reflects on space, time, Blackness, and the limits of Western knowledge—offering a strategy for imagining grounded in African and anti-colonial traditions.

A migrant’s tale

On his latest EP, Kwame Brenya turns a failed migration into musical testimony—offering a biting critique of ECOWAS, broken borders, and the everyday collapse of pan-African ideals.

What Portugal forgets

In the film ‘Tales of Oblivion,’ Dulce Fernandes excavates the buried history of slavery in Portugal, challenging a national mythology built on sea voyages, silence, and selective memory.

Quando Portugal esquece

Em ‘Contos do Esquecimento,’ Dulce Fernandes desenterrou histórias esquecidas da escravidão em Portugal, desafiando uma mitologia nacional construída sobre viagens marítimas, silêncio e memória seletiva.