These Provocative Self-Portraits Show The Many Sides Of Life In Africa

Samuel Fosso discovered the art of photography in the Central African Republic in the ‘70s after fleeing war-torn Nigeria as a child. Decades later, his work had to be rescued as conflict tore apart his adopted home.

Born in Cameroon to an Igbo family, award-winning photographer Samuel Fosso lived in Nigeria as a child, until the Biafran War — which killed a million mostly Igbo people and which some call a genocide — forced him to flee.

Photograph by Samuel Fosso courtesy the Walther Collection and Jean Marc Patras Galerie

He ended up moving to Bangui, Central African Republic, in 1972, when he was 10 years old.

Earlier this year, Fosso's studio was raided by rebels in ongoing violence in the Central African Republic. Fosso had already fled the country, and now lives in Paris; two journalists and his housekeeper rescued his priceless archive.

Photograph by Samuel Fosso courtesy the Walther Collection and Jean Marc Patras Galerie

Fosso's early work wasn't about war and death. It was about the high, playful style of the streets of Bangui.

Photograph by Samuel Fosso courtesy the Walther Collection and Jean Marc Patras Galerie

These photos are from his Self-Portraits from the '70s.

But even the playful is political. As Fosso later told Libération, "I use my body to amuse, to say that everyone can do as he or she wants." Under the autocratic reign of '70s president Jean-Bedel Bokassa, self-expression was no small act.

Photograph by Samuel Fosso courtesy the Walther Collection and Jean Marc Patras Galerie

Fosso's later work is more conceptually political. In these self-portraits, textiles play an important symbolic role.

Photograph by Samuel Fosso courtesy the Walther Collection and Jean Marc Patras Galerie

In "The Chief Who Sold the Africans to the Settlers" (1997) Fosso surrounds himself with colorful fabrics common across Africa. Called lapa in Nigeria, panya in Congo, and kitenge in Kenya, the fabrics are said to have been ditched on the shores of Africa by disappointed Dutch merchants who couldn't get their new colonial subjects in Indonesia to buy them.

Photograph by Samuel Fosso courtesy the Walther Collection and Jean Marc Patras Galerie

In "The Liberated American Woman of the '70s" (1997), Fosso refashions the fabrics in rebellious patchwork, reinterpreting them as a symbol of freedom.

Photograph by Samuel Fosso courtesy the Walther Collection and Jean Marc Patras Galerie

In "The Dream of My Grandfather" (2003), Fosso sits atop adire, an indigo-dyed cloth native to West Africa, practiced well before foreigners dumped their colorful cottons on African markets. The cloth, which can take on any number of patterns, symbolizes wealth and fertility.

In his African Spirits series, Fosso casts himself as figures from the U.S. civil rights movement.

Photograph by Samuel Fosso courtesy the Walther Collection and Jean Marc Patras Galerie

Here Fosso interprets the mug shot of Martin Luther King, Jr., taken in 1956, when King was arrested for his leadership in a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.

Photograph by Samuel Fosso courtesy the Walther Collection and Jean Marc Patras Galerie

This self-portrait as Muhammad Ali is reminiscent of St. Sebastian, a Christian martyr murdered by the Romans. When the US boxer refused to serve in Vietnam, he was stripped of his title, fined and kept from the ring for three years.

Photograph by Samuel Fosso courtesy the Walther Collection and Jean Marc Patras Galerie

Here Fosso depicts himself as Tommie Smith, who won the gold medal in the 200-meter final in the 1968 Olympics. He went to the podium with black socks and no shoes to symbolize African-American poverty, and a black gloved fist held high to symbolize black strength.

The gesture was dubbed the Black Power Salute but Smith, in his memoir, rejected the phrase, focusing instead on the universalism of the human rights he and others were demanding.

"Emperor of Africa," 2013

Photograph by Samuel Fosso courtesy the Walther Collection and Jean Marc Patras Galerie

That was the title claimed by Bokassa, who led the Central African Republic from 1966–1979. In 1976, Bokassa declared himself emperor and threw a lavish coronation, supported by the French. Three years later, the French ousted him from power, and he lived in exile in France for most of the rest of his life.

If you're in New York, you can see the pictures at the Walther Collection Project Space, at 526 West 26th Street.

H/T: Okay Africa