Samuel Fosso


Samuel Fosso is a Cameroonian photographer who has worked for most of his career in the Central African Republic. His work includes using self-portraits adopting a series of personas, often commenting on the history of Africa. He is recognized as one of Central-Africa's leading contemporary artists.
He won the Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands in 2001.

Early life

Fosso was born in Kumba, Cameroon, to Nigerian parents. He grew up in Afikpo, his ancestral home, until he had to flee to Bangui in the Central African Republic at the age of thirteen in 1972 in the wake of the Nigerian Civil War.

Career

In Bangui he began to work as an assistant photographer when he was twelve, and a year later as a portrait photographer with his own studio in Bangui, 'Studio Photo Nationale'. Initially he made self-portraits to fill up the unused parts of his photographic films. These photographs were destined for his mother, who had stayed behind in Nigeria. The making of self-portraits became an objective on its own for him.
As a teenager working in the studio Fosso would often take colorful self portraits in between client photo shoots. His work became discovered by a collection of African intellectuals and writers including, Okwui Enwezor and Iké Udé, bringing Fosso into a more active role in the art community for his adult career.
In 1994 Fosso became known abroad when he won the first edition of African Photography Encounters in Bamako, Mali.
Fosso explores the idea of self-presentation and gender representation, experimenting with props, costumes, and poses in flamboyant 1970s fashion. For his self-portraits he used a delayed shutter release allowing Fosso up to ten seconds to pose for each photograph. He often used cloth backgrounds, in front of which he dressed up in costumes that varied greatly: authentic European costumes, African folk costumes, navy uniforms, karate keikogis, boxer shorts, and so on.
He has portrayed Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. and other black iconic figures. In his series African Spirits, Fosso conveys empowerment and the art of storytelling through his self portraits of celebrated black figures.
On February 5, 2014, amidst looting after sectarian violence, Fosso's home studio in Bangui, containing his complete archive, was ransacked. This was discovered by chance by photojournalist Jerome Delay, who, along with fellow photojournalist Marcus Bleasdale, and Peter Bouckaert, rescued the majority of its contents, estimated at 20,000 negatives and 150 to 200 prints, though Fosso's cameras were stolen. Fosso was in Paris at the time.

''African Spirits''

In 2008, he unveiled one of his most celebrated works, “African Spirits”. Fosso’s theatrical self portraits pay tribute to fourteen political, intellectual, and cultural figures from Pan-African historical movements and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. The photographs are made of gelatin silver print mounted on dibond and sized 162.8 by 122 centimeters. Fosso unveiled African Spirits during the election of the first black president, Barack Obama. This was an important landmark in U.S. History, further expanding Fosso’s message of black empowerment and the celebration of black history.
Influenced by his Igbo heritage and Igbo performance traditions of masquerade and body art, Fosso utilizes the concept of the “living dead” in African Spirits, the idea that the spirit of those before us remain close to the living.
In an article from African contemporary publisher Revue Noire, editor Simon Njami reflects upon African Spirits, “Fosso has disappeared entirely… The bodies that we see represented are no longer his but those of people he impersonates.” For example, in his portrait of Angela Davis, Fosso is costumed in Davis’ iconic afro hairstyle and fashion transforming himself into a 1970s political activist. This concept of theatrical mimicry gives empowerment to the people he embodies and the ideals they stood for.
Fosso was inspired by photographs of Even Arnold and Malcolm X, mimicking their portraits in great detail and transforming into the icons of black history. In his photographs is the recurring theme of storytelling, the performative impersonation of another person or idea. Through storytelling, Fosso is empowering and reclaiming the identity of himself, his subject, and his audience.
Steve Nelson comments on the glamorous and nostalgic theme Fosso adopts after African Independence, the Civil Rights Movement and the rise of Black Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s. “African Spirits points to an exploration of Pan-Africanist identity grounded in the political ideals of the 1960s, which stressed a shared politics of struggle for black people worldwide.” Fosso’s famous self portraits celebrate and challenge concepts of Pan-African identity.

The Emperor of Africa

In 2013, Fosso unveiled his new series, The Emperor of Africa. In this series, Fosso “explores the relationship between Africa and China by recontextualizing icons of Mao Zedong”. Like many other self-portraits in The Emperor of Africa, the self-portrait of Fosso as Mao Zedong is seen as a reflection Mao Zedong's image, as well as a symbol of the economic interests Africa had with China. In Gabriel García Márquez’s novel, Autumn of the Patriarch, she describes Fosso’s Mao Zedong Portrait as an “ancestral figure and absent dictator”. Fosso not only portrays Mao Zedong as a liberator who is well-admired in Africa, but also as a founder “of a modern imperial behemoth” of China’s growing economy and cultural presence that is embraced throughout Africa.

Photographic style

Fosso's style is somewhat comparable with that of Diane Arbus, in that his self-portraits show a glimpse of our own humanity. Arbus's photography has been said to show that everyone has their own identity, that is to say what remains when we take away the rest. In contrast Fosso's varying costumes are said to show that identity is determined partly as well by things over which humans lack control. His work has therefore also been characterized as having a disclosure of how humans can in fact create their own identity.

Awards

Fosso's work is held in the following public collections: