Tsoku Maela – Broken Things – Family Portrait
For instance, The Uncanny, a photography serie by the Belgian photographer Leonard Pongo, unveils the everyday life of a group of Congolese people living in the outskirts of the city. Pongo decided not to focus on the country’s poignant upheavals but rather on banality, on rituals taking place everyday. Azu Nwagbogu, curator of the festival intended to elucidate photography’s function as a polysemic object: document, message, record and image, photography’s changing personality has the power to affirm and to be a witness for the upcoming generations, of our current world.
Photography thus “assumes the role of demiurge who has created the world”, and at the same time challenges it by proposing other realities. Juno Calypso’s work A dream in Green shows the naked body of a “green” woman in a mirrored bathroom, the provocative posture of the woman and the odd colour of her skin could question femininity. Jenevieve Akin’s work titled Great Expectations, name of the eponym book by the British author Jane Austen, portraitures another woman wearing a bride’s dress. These photographs might refer to the importance of marriage and the meaning behind this uniting act nowadays. The model is shown in the kitchen and the conjugal room, both places confining and isolating her from the outside world.
Mila Autio – 4 set of diptychs printed 70 cm tall
Moreover, fashion appears as an identity asset; patterns, flashy colours and forms are representative of Africa’s cultural heritage. Ishola Akpo, Bruno Morais and Flurina Rothenberg among other photographer’s works bear witness on African’s inventiveness on this particular field. Nevertheless, identity is explored as a global issue within the work of South African artist Gideon Mendel. His series Submerged depicts the threat of floods in countries like Brazil, the United States, Pakistan and more.
Lagos Photo Festival underlines photography’s perennial position as a memory keeper and costumes perpetrator of contemporary societies, a cognitive tool permitting the viewer to look carefully and hence to understand from another angle.
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