Samuel Fossovia okayafrica: Born in 1962 in Kumba, Cameroon, the work of award-winning contemporary
Samuel Fossovia okayafrica: Born in 1962 in Kumba, Cameroon, the work of award-winning contemporary photographer Samuel Fosso -Nicknamed “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” - embodies the complexities of identity and in his 1997 series Tati, he adopts a myriad of personas including a golfer, a pirate, and the liberated woman of the seventies. Fosso’s personal and public work has always brought the transformative possibilities of photography to the fore and he does so again with his African Spirits series, a set of fourteen black and white images where the photographer reenacts iconic images of cult figures within African and African-American history. With African Spirits, Fosso pays homage to figures of the civil rights movement and Panafricanist heads of state like Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis, Tommie Smith, Muhammed Ali, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and Haile Selassie to name a few. These and other studio portraits from his three decade long career are the the focus of a new exhibit from the Walther Collection‘s two-year exploration of photo and video narratives from contemporary African artists. (read more here)In February 2014, amid catastrophic violence in the Central African Republic, Fosso’s studio was ransacked and much of his archive destroyed. Despite this, the Walther Collection in New York managed to stage a solo exhibition of Fosso’s work. His series “African Spirits” and “The Emperor of Africa” was shown January 2015. -- source link
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