Name/Title
Life & afterlife in BeninEntry/Object ID
DT541.24.L54 2005Description
"This collection of portraiture, comprising the work of nine photographers from Benin, mostly working during the 1960's and 1970's, opens a new chapter in the history of African photography." "Most people's knowledge of West African photography is limited to the Bamako school of Mali, whose masters Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibe were widely discovered at the beginning of the 1990's. But where Keita and Sidibe worked predominantly to establish the modernity of their lives, here in Benin, photographers such as Sebastien Mehinto (otherwise known as Pigeon) often travelled miles by bicycle to find their clients in far-flung villages, and sometimes developed their exquisitely crafted photographs in makeshift darkrooms constructed in the bush. Marked by dark dramas and deep mysticisms, their portraits record a people caught between a pre-colonial past and a post-colonial future. For many of the people in the photographs it would be their first and last encounter with a photographer. Amongst the weddings and communions, the courting couples and proud parents, lie astonishing images of revenants and ju-ju men; voodoo priests and priestesses; thieves and murderers; prostitutes and pimps - and most startlingly, an extraordinary sequence of apresmort or deathbed portraits. For if you happened to live in the People's Republic of Benin (formerly known as the Kingdom of Dahomey) during the 1960's and 1970's, photography was likely to play a role not just in your life - but in your afterlife." -- BOOK JACKETContext
"This book is published to coincide with the exhibition 'Life and Death in Bénin--African Photographers from the Collection of Alex Van Gelder', 4 June-21 August 2005, at the Fotomuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland." -- COLOPHONLexicon
Search Terms
bini (african people), clothing and dress--africa, clothing and dress--benin, portrait photography--beninBook Details
Editor
Alex Van GelderPublisher
PhaidonDate Published
2005ISBN
9780714845135, 0714845132Notes
Length: 133General Notes
Note Type
ContentsNote
Preface / Alex Van Gelder -- Studio Africa / Thomas Seelig -- Life & afterlife in Benin: photography in the service of ethnographic realism / Okwui Enwezor -- Biographies.