List

Reading list: Contemporary African Photography

These texts chosen by our curators, explore the themes and subject matter of the A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography exhibition

Common Ground, part of A World in Common 2023, Tate Modern © Tate Photography (Lucy Green)

Top Picks

Osei Bonsu
African Art Now (2022)

James Barnor
Ever Young (2015)

Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Alex Hirst
Rotimi Fani-Kayode & Alex Hirst: Photographs (1996)

Tamar Garb
Distance and Desire: Contemporary African Photography from the Walther Collection (2013)

Ekow Eshun

African State of Mind: Contemporary Photography Reimagines a Continent (2020)

Martin Barnes and Tamar Garb

Figures and Fictions (2011)

Osei Bonsu

African Art Now (2022)

Antwaun Sargent

The New Black Vanguard (2019)

Nathalie Herschdorfer

Body: The Photography Book (2019)

Tanisha C. Ford

Kwame Brathwaite: Black Is Beautiful (2019)

Tamar Garb

Distance and Desire: Contemporary African Photography from the Walther Collection (2013)

Erin Haney

Photography and Africa (2010)

Samuel Fosso

Samuel Fosso: Autoportrait (2020)

Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Alex Hirst

Rotimi Fani-Kayode & Alex Hirst: Photographs (1996)

Leila Alaoui

The Moroccans: Photographs by Leila Alaoui (2019)

Zanele Muholi

Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama: Hail the Dark Lioness (2018)

James Barnor

Ever Young (2015)

John Peffer

Portraiture and Photography in Africa (African Expressive Cultures) (2013)

Jennifer Bajorek

Unfixed photography and decolonial imagination (2020)

A World in Common

A celebration of the varied landscape of contemporary African photography today

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Common Ground

A space for comfort, connection and rest
Embodied Archives

Join contemporary artists who play with truth, fiction, memory and everyday magic to create living archives
Portraits of a Community

Read about Ruth Ossai's Portraits of a Community for A World in Common which shines a light on the African diaspora in London.