An African context
A group of Egyptian photographers are represented for the first time at the Fifth Festival of African Photography, reports Teri Wang
The Fifth Festival of African Photography in Bamako, Mali, opened on 20 October and for the first time features a group showing of work by Egyptians. The only Egyptian to have previously shown at Bamako is documentary photographer Hisham Labib.
Following its month-long opening in Mali the Festival will travel around the world for one year. Organised as a collaboration between the French Association for Artistic Action (AFAA)/Africa Programme in Creations and the Ministry for the Culture of Mali, the Bamako Festival is a biennial exposition that aims to provide opportunities for African photographers to exhibit and interact with an international base of colleagues, curators, and professionals.
The Egyptian showing, curated by the Townhouse Gallery, includes six artists: Jihan Ammar, Lara Baladi, Hala El- Koussy, Rehab El-Sadek, Maha Maamoun and Youssef Nabil. In addition German-Egyptian artist Susan Hefuna will also participate in a programme of diaspora photographers while the Egyptian portrait photographer Van Leo (nee Levon Boyadjian) will be posthumously honoured in a separate tribute alongside Mfon Essien of Ghana, Seydou Keita of Mali, and Mohamed Dib of Algeria. All four photographers have died since the last Festival. The homage to Van Leo brings together the curatorial efforts of Negar Azimi on behalf of the Beirut-based Arab Image Foundation (FAI) and the American University in Cairo (AUC), which holds the Van Leo collection. The tribute offers a rare glimpse into lesser-known works by Van Leo, who achieved fame with his autoportraits and photographs of Egyptian celebrities. Included in the exhibition are portraits Van Leo took of ordinary citizens gazing into the lens with a boldness that belies their daily existence.
The variety of work presented in the Egyptian exposition ranges from still portraiture to video installation. Nabil uses traditional hand- colouring techniques, cinematic lighting and wry humour to create portraits disjointed from history. Maamoun's elongated panoramas emphasise visual oppositions within Cairo's cityscape: the print of a woman's scarf exists alongside the gleam of a nearby taxicab. Baladi, a member of the FAI, will show saturated colour prints from the series Larabesque while Ammar, who currently works as a photo editor for AFP, shows a portfolio of documentary photographs taken at weddings in Tehran and Cairo. El-Koussy's work revolves around the reconstruction of familiar city scenes that challenge the definition of a collective memory while El-Sadek's video installation, a rarity among the sea of still image work at Bamako, redefines the boundaries of the photo essay by fusing elements of photojournalism, film, and montage.
The six photographers chosen for Bamako come from diverse backgrounds. Baladi is of Lebanese-Egyptian origin, was raised in Paris and now makes her home in Cairo. Maamoun is an American-born Egyptian who has spent the bulk of her adult life in Egypt. Ammar and Nabil are both Egyptian: the former now works in Paris where the latter is currently doing an artist's residency. El-Koussy and El-Sadek have lived and worked almost exclusively in Egypt.
An Egyptian platform at Bamako bears witness to what Simon Njami, the Festival's coordinator, sees as the "total integration in the event of North Africa, which all too often seems distinct from Africa south of the Sahara", Such geographic delineations are, however, somewhat attenuated by Njami's additional contentions that "the question of what we mean by African photography remains entirely open" and that the African photographic voice cannot be defined by geographical or national boundaries. It might seem petty to cite the number of African countries -- 20 -- included in this year's Bamako were it not for the fact that nearly half of these African nations have never before been represented at the festival. Logistical limitations plague every type of curation, especially an exhibition on the scale of Bamako, but it remains important that the festival seeks to provide a platform for unrepresented countries in subsequent biennials. As a travelling exhibition receiving international recognition, the legitimacy of the festival ultimately hinges on its ability to comprehensively represent the polyphonic voice of African photography.
