Samuel Fosso

For Samuel Fosso, photography is ‘a form of therapy that has enabled me to bring about a sense of self and tell the world that I exist, that I am here. Self-portraits give me the opportunity to engage with my own biography'.

As a teenager, Fosso set up a commercial photography studio in Bangui, Central African Republic. At the end of each workday, he would take photographs of himself to use up the remaining roll of film. These experimental self-portraits remained private for decades, until the artist presented them at the first edition of the Bamako photography biennial in Mali in 1994. Fosso’s participation in this festival cemented his practice within the rich and complex history of photography on the African continent.

In his 2008 series African Spirits, Fosso carefully restages famous photographs of influential African, African American and Caribbean cultural and political leaders. Bringing our attention to the format of the photograph itself, Fosso examines how iconic images can come to represent cultural or political movements that resonate across time.

Fosso prompts us to ask: how do famous figures influence us, whether in the clothes we wear, the poses we make, or the ideologies we believe? When and how do we perform?