The independence movements that swept the African continent in the 1960s coincided with campaigns for civil rights in the United States. These struggles formed a call and response that established ‘Africa’ as a political idea. Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination examines the role of portrait photography within this emerging sense of Pan-Africanism: how did photographers and their sitters contribute to the proliferation of Pan-African solidarity during the mid-20th century?
Photographers working in Central and West African cities created images of everyday citizens, dazzling music scenes, and potent manifestations of youth culture that reflected emerging political realities. Jean Depara, Seydou Keita, Malick Sidibé and Sanlé Sory portrayed residents across Bamako, Bobo-Dioulasso, and Kinshasa at a time when the winds of decolonial change swept the African continent in tandem with the burgeoning US Civil Rights movement.
James Barnor and Kwame Brathwaite – living in Europe and North America – contributed to the construction of Africa as a political idea. Samuel Fosso, Silvia Rosi and Njideka Akunyili Crosby show the enduring relevance of these themes.