Samuel Fosso
" Fosso, (...) by merging a popular African representational scene and language, took the photographic discourse of African identity to a space that exceeded the borders of individualised memorial and commemoration, and into a significant socio-cultural, as well as political temporality. "
Okwui Enwezor in Samuel Fosso, 5 Continents Editions, 2004
Born 1962 in Kumba (Cameroon)
Lives and works in Bangui, Central African Republic and Paris, France
French-Camerounian photographer Samuel Fosso has developed a prolific body of work, which has been exploring the potential of the photographic medium for nearly fifty years, and brought it fully into the realm of performance art.
His work has increasingly engaged with the cultural mythologies embodied in recognizable figures and social types - his career oscillating between personal introspection and collective narratives, tackling questions of identity, history, politics and gender.
When Samuel Fosso opened his own photography studio in 1975 in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, at just thirteen years of age, he had already experienced a great deal. Born in Cameroon, he suffered from paralysis as a small child and only recovered slowly with the help of his grandfather, a healer in Nigeria. Following the outbreak of the Biafra War in 1967, Fosso was forced to flee, first to Cameroon and finally to Bangui. After a short apprenticeship with a local photographer, he set himself up in the city as a portrait photographer.
To avoid wasting expensive film material, he began filling unfinished film rolls with self-portraits in the evenings. Inspired by the style of young African-Americans discovered in pop-culture magazines, or of the musician Prince Nico Mbarga, extremely popular in West Africa, Fosso posed as cross-gender characters in extravagant clothes and accessories. Every so often he sent his photographs to his grandmother, but otherwise he did not show them to anybody, partly because he did not want to risk political persecution due to his rather unconventional portrayals. That changed in 1994: after being discovered by the French photographer Bernard Descamps, Samuel was invited to the Rencontres africaines de la photographie in Bamako, the most important festival of its kind in Africa, where he won his first award. It was only after subsequently meeting and talking to significant African photographers like Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keita that Fosso became more aware of the relevance of his own artistic work and was motivated to hone it further.
Inspired in part by his Igbo heritage and Igbo performance traditions of masquerade and body art, Fosso eventually forged a more explicitly theatrical style of self-portraiture. He himself remained the protagonist of his work, which at first continued to portray archetypes - always revolving around the question of identity - and became increasingly political.
The possibilities inherent in his earlier photographic experiments are borne out in series such as "Tati" in 1997, in which, supported for the first time by a production team (makeup artists, costume designers, lighting assistants...), he stages colorful, satirical tableaux of characters such as a tribal chief and a liberated 1970s woman.
For his series "African Spirits", which was completed in 2008, Fosso selected fourteen personalities from Africa and North America who had played a significant role in supporting the black population on both continents in their fight for equality, independence and freedom. They include politicians like Nelson Mandela and Patrice Lumumba, civil rights campaigners such as Angela Davis, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, as well as athletes who were part of the black civil rights movement like Muhammad Ali and Tommie Smith. Fosso reproduced existing portraits of these people from different sources, slipping into their roles himself in time-consuming and elaborate sessions. He used mug shots, police photos, press images and professional studio portraits. Fosso's large-format, black-and-white pictures are an homage to those who helped to strengthen black rights. Many of them paid a high price for their commitment, some even with their lives. Fosso created "African Spirits" to ensure that their efforts are not forgotten, so that following generations can find out how much has been achieved on the path toward equal rights and what is still to be done. In these and other works, Fosso also touches on the Igbo masquerade concept of the living-dead, in which the spirits of forebears remain close to the living.
Fosso's work also reveals his deep interest in the circulation of images. The poses and costumes in "African Spirits" are drawn from well-known photographs such as Magnum photographer Eve Arnold's quietly powerful portrait of Malcolm X (1961). Fosso's astute understanding of the power that images accumulate through dissemination guides his approach, both in his meticulous restaging of famous portraits and in his playful evocation and deconstruction of stereotypes via his invented portraits.With "Emperor of Africa", Samuel Fosso emboded Mao Zedong, recreating his official iconography in his poses and with the background landscape. This unique vision of the Chinese leader could be seen as a subtle criticism of the power China exercises over the African continent, through its policy of developing its natural resources.
Samuel Fosso's work can be described as an artistic work of resilience and resistance; this can also be seen in the recent series entitled "SIXSIXSIX", a monumental installation of 666 large-format Polaroids that is both a political and philosophical statement. The series paints a picture of a complex understanding of humanity, in both the best and the worst senses of the term, and whose condition is one of acceptance of both joy and suffering.
Sources :« Samuel Fosso. Photographic Self-Explorations » in Anne-Marie Beckmann (edited by), XL Photography 6. Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Heidelberg, Kehrer Verlag, May 2019
Rebecca Lowery, « Introduction to Samuel Fosso » in MoMA website, 2018
CollectionS
Musée National d'Art Moderne - Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Paris, France
Centre National des Arts Plastiques, France
FRAC Réunion, France
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France
Tate, London, UK
Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK
Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt/Main, Germany
Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, Frankfurt/Main, Germany
Generali Foundation Collection, Salzburg, Germany
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, Italy
Fondation Gandur pour l'Art, Geneva, Switzerland
Fondation Sindika Dokolo, Luanda, Angola
Fondation Zinsou, Cotonou, Benin
Robert Devereux's Sina Jina Collection of Contemporary Art, Lamu, Kenya
Gordon Schachat Collection, Johannesburg, South Africa
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Montréal, Canada
The Wedge Collection, Toronto, Canada
Progressive Corporation, Mayfield Village, OH, USA
Akron Museum of Art, Akron, OH, USA
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, NY, USA
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, USA
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA
The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm, Germany and New York, NY, USA
International Center of Photography, New York, NY, USA
The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, USA
Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, USA
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA, USA
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), CA, USA
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA, USA
Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ, USA
The Newark Museum of Art, NJ, USA
Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL, USA
Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS, USA
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, USA
The Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO, USA
Saint Louis Art Museum, MO, USA
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, USA
Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN, USA
Baltimore Museum of Art, MD, USA
AWARDS
2022 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2023 (shortlisted)
2018 ICP Infinity Award, category Art, New York, USA
PHotoESPAÑA Award, Madrid, Spain
2001 Prince Claus Fund Award, Den Hague, The Netherlands
2000 Dak'Art First prize for photography, Dakar, Senegal
1995 Afrique en Créations, Paris, France
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Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize
The Photographers' Gallery, London 3 Mar - 11 Jun 2023Since 2016, the influential Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize rewards the artists' significant contribution to photography over the previous 12 months.Read more -
Ritratti africani
Magazzino delle Idee, Trieste 18 Feb - 11 Jun 2023The exhibition "Ritratti africani (African Portraits). Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé, Samuel Fosso" curated by Filippo Maggia presents over one hundred works by the three most famous African photographers at the Magazzino delle Idee in Trieste.Read more -
Samuel Fosso
Huis Marseille, Amsterdam 10 Dec 2022 - 12 Mar 2023In the winter of 2022 Huis Marseille will present the first-ever large-scale retrospective of the French-Cameroon photographer Samuel Fosso (1962, Kumba, Cameroon) in the Netherlands. The exhibition will encompass the entire museum to reveal the breadth and richness of Fosso's oeuvre (...)Read more -
Samuel Fosso. Affirmative Acts
Princeton University Art Museum 19 Nov 2022 - 29 Jan 2023Curated by Princeton Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu, a specialist in African and African Diaspora art history and theory, "Samuel Fosso: Affirmative Acts" is the first major US survey of one of the most renowned contemporary artists based in Africa today. In Fosso's hands, self-portraiture becomes at once a form of masking, revelation, and self-affirmation, a theatrical event and embodiment of the individual and the body politic, and a performance of social commentary.Read more -
Samuel Fosso
Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Mönchsberg 22 Oct 2022 - 10 Apr 2023The Generali Foundation at Museum der Moderne Salzburg organizes Samuel Fosso's first personal exhibition in Austria.Read more -
Samuel Fosso. Encontrarse en el otro
Museo del canal Interoceanico, Panama 12 Oct 2022 - 26 Feb 2023The exhibition "Samuel Fosso. Encontrarse con el otro" is the first personal exhibition of the artist in Latin America, considered one of the most important photographers in Africa.Read more -
Samuel Fosso. African Spirits
The Menil Collection, Houston 5 Aug 2022 - 15 Jan 2023The Menil Collection's exhibition of "African Spirits" is in conjunction with the 2022 FotoFest Biennial and "African Cosmologies Redux" (...)Read more -
Samuel Fosso. The Man with a Thousand Faces
The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm 29 May - 20 Nov 2022The Walther Collection presents a retrospective exhibition of photographic works by Samuel Fosso (b. 1962), one of the most renowned contemporary African artists working today. Spanning his five-decade career (...)Read more -
Shifting Dialogues. Photography from The Walther Collection
K21, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf 9 Apr - 25 Sep 2022With more than 500 photographic works from Africa, its diaspora, and Europe, the exhibition "Shifting Dialogues: Photography from The Walther Collection" traces the development of photography as a history of transnational parallels and contradictions (...)Read more -
Installation ALLONZENFANS & SIXSIXSIX
Gare de Lyon, Paris 1 - 15 Dec 2021On the occasion of the major retrospective dedicated to Samuel Fosso, the Maison européenne de la photographie has joined forces with SNCF Gares & Connexions to show two of the artist's recent series in the gare de Lyon in Paris.Read more -
Samuel Fosso
Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris 10 Nov 2021 - 13 Mar 2022The MEP is pleased to present the first major retrospective of French-Cameroonian photographer Samuel Fosso. This landmark exhibition spans his five-decade career, revisiting bodies of work (...)Read more -
This World is White No Longer. Views of a Decentered World
Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Rupertinum 24 Apr - 10 Oct 2021This World is White No Longer. Views of a Decentered World - Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, 2021Read more -
Who is gazing? A toi appartient le regard et (...) la liaison infinie entre les choses
Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Paris 30 Jun - 1 Nov 2020Who is gazing? A toi appartient le regard et (...) la liaison infinie entre les choses - Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, ParisRead more -
Samuel Fosso: Self-Portraits
National Portrait Gallery, London 24 Jun - 24 Sep 2017Fosso began making self-portraits aged thirteen when he opened his own photographic studio in Bangui, Central African Republic in 1975. In these private studio self-portraits, the artist used masquerade and...Read more
LATEST Books
Christine Barthe, Samuel Fosso, Photo Poche n° 168, Editions Actes Sud / Photofile, Thames & Hudson Ltd, June-July 2022
Mark Sealy, Photography: Race, Rights and Representation, London, Lawrence & Wishart, March 2022
Christian Gattinoni & Yannick Vigouroux, Les Fictions documentaires en photographie, Nouvelles éditions Scala, December 2021
Dr. Kenneth Montague (edited by), As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic, Aperture Editions, November 2021
Studio Photo Nationale, Sébastien Girard & Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris, November 2021
Charlotte Jensen, Photography Now: Fifty Pioneers Defining Photography for the Twenty-First Century, Lewes, UK, Octopus Publishing Group in collaboration with Tate, April 2021
À toi appartient le regard (…) et la liaison infinie entre les choses, exhibition catalogue, Paris, co-edition musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac / Actes Sud, July 2020
Steven Evens & Mark Sealy, African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other, FotoFest Biennial 2020 exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, Schilt Publishing, 2020
Samuel Fosso: SIXSIXSIX, with a conversation between Samuel Fosso and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Steidl & The Walther Collection, New York, May 2020
Okwui Enwezor (ed.), Samuel Fosso: Autoportrait, Steidl / The Walther Collection, New York. Texts by Quentin Bajac, Yves Chatap, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Oluremi C. Onabanjo, Terry Smith, Claire Staebler, James Thomas, April 2020 (French version published in November 2021)
MoMA Highlights: 375 Works from The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Publications, 2019
Phil Taylor, « Samuel Fosso », in Among Others: Blackness at MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, September 2019
Articles & Reviews
Julian Lucas, « Samuel Fosso's Century in Selfies », in The New Yorker, 21 January 2023
Arthur Lubow, « One Photographer, Many Personalities », in The New York Times, 6 January 2023
Natacha Wolinski, « Samuel Fosso le caméléon, on stage à Paris », in The Art Newspaper n° 37, January 2022
Clémentine Mercier, « Samuel Fosso. Une rétro par miracles », in Libération, 4 December 2021
Valérie Duponchelle, « Samuel Fosso, fier autoportrait de l'Afrique », in Le Figaro, 19 November 2021
Claire Guillot, « Les métamorphoses de Samuel Fosso », in M, le Magazine du Monde, 17 November 2021
Frédérique Chapuis, « La MEP expose Samuel Fosso, l'homme aux mille visages », in Télérama Sortir, 3 November 2021
Simon Njami, « Samuel Fosso, Dr. Jekyll et Mr. Hyde », in Fisheye n° 50, November-December 2020
« Fosso Fashion 2021 », in A#22. A Magazine Curated by Grace Wales Bonner, November 2021
Luc Sante, « The Best Books to Give This Year: Photography », in The New York Times Book Review, 6 December 2020
Claire Guillot, « Regards éclairés au musée du quai Branly », in Le Monde, 3 October 2020
Alex Greenberger, « The Future Now: 10 African Artists to Watch », in ARTnews.com, 18 July 2018
Gloria Crespo MacLennan, « Samuel Fosso: "Un día habrá un papa negro que será de Africa" », in El Pais, 7 June 2018
David Doucet, Portfolio « L'Afrique du futur », in Les Inrocks n° 1150, 9 December 2017
Nicolas Michel, « Biennale africaine de la photographie : Samuel Fosso, un pape noir à Bamako », in Jeune Afrique, 4 December 2017
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A Magazine Curated By Grace Wales Bonner
Rhapsody In The Street November 2021 Read more -
A toi appartient le regard
Exhibition catalogue Co-edition musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac / Actes Sud, July 2020 Read more -
Autoportrait
Monograph Steidl - The Walther Collection, April 2020 Read more -
Photography: Race, Rights and Representation
Selection of essays, interviews and reflections Mark Sealy, Lawrence & Wishart, March 2022 Read more -
Samuel Fosso
Photo Poche Christine Barthe, Actes Sud, June 2022 Read more -
Samuel Fosso: Autoportrait
Monograph - French version Steidl - The Walther Collection, 2021 Read more -
SIXSIXSIX
Samuel Fosso Steidl - The Walther Collection, May 2020 Read more -
Studio Photo Nationale
Samuel Fosso Sébastien Girard & Maison européenne de la photographie, November 2021 Read more -
Xl Photography 6
Art Collection Deutsche Börse Kehrer Verlag, 2019 Read more
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First acquisition by the SFMOMA
Samuel Fosso's work enters the Photography Department July 1, 2022Two works belonging to the "African Spirits" series have entered the SFMOMA's collection. "Angela Davis" is currently on view in the new exhibition "Sightlines: Photographs from the Collection", on view until May 7, 2023 (...)Read more -
Samuel Fosso in conversation with Chris Dercon
Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris December 16, 2021The MEP is pleased to welcome photographer Samuel Fosso and art historian Chris Dercon for an exceptional conversation in the auditorium. The discussion will be...Read more -
The "SIXSIXSIX" series by Samuel Fosso enters the musée du quai Branly
October 19, 2021We are happy to announce that the monumental work 'SIXSIXSIX' by Samuel Fosso (2016) enters the collections of the musée du quai Branly - Jacques...Read more
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Samuel Fosso's Century in Selfies
Julian Lucas, The New Yorker, January 21, 2023 -
One Photographer, Many Personalities
Arthur Lubow, The New York Times, January 6, 2023 -
Becoming Samuel Fosso
Sarah Moroz, British Journal of Photography, December 8, 2022 -
A Transnational Artist in a Postcolonial World
Maia Julis & Iheanyi Onwuegbucha, Princeton University Art Museum's Magazine, December 1, 2022 -
Samuel Fosso le caméléon, on stage à Paris
Natacha Wolinski, The Art Newspaper, January 1, 2022 -
Narcisismo altruista
Christian Caujolle, Internazionale 1439, December 10, 2021 -
Samuel Fosso: l'autoportrait comme revanche
Magali Jauffret, L'Humanité, December 7, 2021 -
Prenez, ceci est mon corps
Nicolas Michel, Jeune Afrique, December 5, 2021 -
Samuel Fosso. Une rétro par miracles
Clémentine Mercier, Libération, December 4, 2021 -
Samuel Fosso, fier autoportrait de l'Afrique
Valérie Duponchelle, Le Figaro, November 19, 2021 -
Les métamorphoses de Samuel Fosso
Claire Guillot, M, le magazine du Monde, November 17, 2021 -
La MEP expose Samuel Fosso, l'homme aux mille visages
Frédérique Chapuis, Télérama Sortir, November 3, 2021 -
666 fois Fosso
Rafael Pic, Le Quotidien de l'Art, June 24, 2021 -
The Best Books to Give This Year: Photography
Luc Sante, The New York Times Book Review, December 6, 2020 -
Photo : regards éclairés au Musée du quai Branly
Claire Guillot, Le Monde, October 2, 2020 -
À toi appartient le regard - Photographies et vidéos contemporaines
Multiple authors, Beaux Arts Editions, July 8, 2020 -
The Future Now: 10 African Artists to Watch
Alex Greenberger, ARTnews, July 18, 2018