Samuel Fosso / Studio Photo Nationale A4 Print

In 2014, Samuel Fosso's studio and home were attacked in the conflict-ridden Central African Republic. Photojournalists Jerome Delay and Marcus Bleasdale, with the help of Peter Bouckaert (a human rights watchdog), rescued Samuel Fosso's negatives from the fire and delivered them to him in Paris.
 For the next seven years, the three steel trunks containing more than 50,000 negatives remained locked away until they were acquired in the spring of 2021.
 One of Samuel Fosso's early studio photographs from the 1980s, this captivating studio shot of Bangui (the capital of the Central African Republic) was taken decades before the photographer was recognised as one of Africa's leading artists.

 Samuel Fosso (born 1962 in Cameroon)
 One of Africa's leading contemporary artists, photographer Samuel Fosso forged his artistic path in unexpected ways through his work as a commercial portrait photographer. His experiences in commercial portraiture eventually inspired his signature conceptual self-portraits, and he developed a distinctive aesthetic that both celebrates and challenges notions of African identity while engaging with the history of studio photography in Africa.
 With his studio business flourishing, Fosso realized his clients preferred quick turnaround times for portraits. Using up remaining film at the end of the day, he began taking photographs of himself to be processed for print and sent to his family in Nigeria. His early self-portraits reveal an innate interest in studied self-expression. Against improvised backdrops, he confidently experiments with props, poses, and costumes. Defying authoritarian decrees banning bell-bottoms and platform boots, he often rebelliously dresses in the flamboyant fashions of the 1970s.
 Inspired by his Igbo heritage and its traditions of costume and body art, Fosso eventually began to create self-portraits in a more theatrical style. Series such as "Tati" (1997), in which he portrays colorful, satirical characters such as a tribal chief and a liberated woman of the 1970s, and "African Spirits" (2008), in which he portrays prominent cultural figures and civil rights and African independence leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Haile Selassie, demonstrate the potential inherent in his earlier photographic experiments. In these and other works, Fosso engages with the Igbo notion of costume as a way for ancestral spirits to linger close to the living.
 Fosso's work also displays a deep interest in the circulation of images: the poses and costumes in African Spirits are borrowed from famous photographs, such as Eve Arnold's quietly powerful 1961 portrait of Malcolm X for Magnum. Whether he painstakingly recreates famous portraits or playfully evokes and deconstructs preconceived notions, Fosso's keen understanding of the cumulative power of image propagation underpins his approach.
 Risograph print
 Printed: 2021
 Size: 330 x 240 mm
 Editing, design and printing: Sébastien Girard