inspirations::street studio

Benetton puts the spotlight on entrepreneurial Africa. Its global communication campaign for 2008 promotes the Birima micro-credit programme in Senegal, a co-operative credit society founded by the Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour. The programme will also receive financial support from Benetton Group. Africa Works – the slogan of the campaign developed by Fabrica – will appear on billboards and in the press throughout the world, from February 2008. It features Senegalese workers who have used micro loans to start small, productive businesses. Photographer James Mollison portrays them with the tools of their trade against a neutral background. They include, amongst others, a fisherman, a decorator, a musician, a jewellery-maker, a farmer, a tailor, two textile sellers and a boxer. These everyday people become tangible symbols of an Africa that uses the dignity of work to fight poverty, promote equitable development, maximise its resources and take back responsibility for creating its future.

africa works brings together positive social change (birima’s microcredit program), and the power of celebrity/media to focus attention (youssou n’dour and benetton). those are fascinating topics on their own but what intrigues me most are the unique “street studio” portraits by photographer james mollison of the senegalese who are beneficiaries of birima’s program.

“if i can’t bring subjects to my studio, i will take my studio to the subjects”. this is the concept behind the “street studio”. most famously, richard avedon took a large format camera and his trademark white background around the american west and came back with photographs of working class americans that de-glamorized the common perception of the “cowboy” west. clay enos and stefan ghufkvin [quicktime movie] set out to photograph as many new yorkers as possible in a year with their new york 000 project and captured the bewildering variety and individuality of the people who walk the streets of the city’s 5 boroughs.

james mollison’s street studio. from africa works microcredit site

hauling a studio-style camera, lights, reflectors and backgrounds into the field and the process/performance that is a portrait session removes a portrait subject out of the everyday. in the process the subject working with or against the photographer makes a decision on how to be portrayed, in a way a quick portrait taken with a portable camera in a natural environment doesn’t. the process also removes context/background and heightens what is captured (the farmer’s muddy feet above, for e.g.). a body of work developed this way over time enables a photographer to deeply examine and present a subject matter, hopefully illuminating a social truth about the individual or some group that that person represents. august sander who created the epic “people of the 20th century” a series of over 600 portraits of individual germans is the grandaddy of all field portraitists. his work is still unequaled as both a monumental social document about germany in the early 20th century and a work of art that generations of photographers still emulate.

i started this blog mostly because i was (am) dissatisfied with what kinds of pictures i was taking and did not know how to progress beyond taking what i now call “pretty pictures”. it was (is) part of a process of looking inward and outward to find a way to grow into taking pictures of social relevance/truth both to myself individually and as an african. what mollison’s africa works images do is to offer a glimpse of a way forward for me, to make images that are both art and social document. as we kenyans try to find some kind of national identity, what better time would there be to trudge photography equipment around the country putting together a social document of kenyans now, and then trudge right back around again with a giant exhibition of those photographs so that we kenyans can gaze on each other and understand a thing or two about our collective condition.