Posted: September 27th, 2008 | Author:kamau | Filed under:photography | Comments Off
Detail from Fazal Sheikh’s book “A Sense of Uncommon Ground”
Faisal Sheikh was born to a Kenyan father and American mother. I discovered his work via an amazing book called “A Sense of Uncommon Ground” which I stumbled upon on a previous visit to Kenya (Text Book Center, natch). It is a compendium of portraits taken in Sudanese, Ethiopian and Somali refugee communities in the northeast of Kenya in the early to mid 1990’s. What seperates his work from what I like to call disaster porn taken in conflict areas around Africa is a certain stillness and peace of the subjects despite their dire situations indicating that Sheikh’s collaborates with his subjects on how they should be portrayed.
Sheikh discusses his work in an interview from 2003 at the “Cruel and Tender” show at the Tate Modern in London.
COLOPHON: Brief fling with the pretty but shallow new theme is over. Have reconciled with the not so attractive but reliable Cutline theme. Note to self: need to stop being such a sucker for a pretty face.
Screenshot from “Soweto Surfing” photo essay on Jamie-James Medina’s web site
Soweto is South Africa’s largest ghetto, a sprawling stretch of townships on the outskirts of Johannesburg. With an estimated population of one million, this former centre of the anti-apartheid struggle faces chronic problems of poverty and overcrowding, and remains a notoriously dangerous place to live and visit.
It is here where you’ll find Train Surfing, the semi-suicidal act of climbing on top and sometimes underneath a moving train. Born in the early Nineties out of a restless desire to embrace life (and death) after years of oppression, Train Surfing has evolved into something of an underground sport not unlike skateboarding in the 1970’s. There are similar elements of fringe outsider behavior, danger and adulation of male, and most importantly, female onlookers.
The internets informed me that train surfers are found wherever there are young men and trains, and that it was in an old issue of Colors where I had possibly seen images of train surfing youth in Rio de Janeiro a while ago (see below).
Surfistas de Trem (Train Surfers), 1995 by Rogerio Reis
The exhibition juxtaposes photography taken in the studio tradition in (mostly) sub-Saharan Africa in the late 19th-century by European photographers with those images taken in this tradition (mostly) in Africa from the 1950s through to the present day. The selection of images contrasts an ethnographic and pre-conceived perception of African people, entrenched by colonialism, and a very different vibrant and individuated view generated by African photographers who have repositioned the practice of studio photography.
Member of Hamalali Wayunago Garifuna Dance Group performs at Africa Day Parade in Harlem
MUSIC: Belize: The Exile’s song [click on the "Watch Video" button]. Marco Werman’s 2004 Frontline World piece on the paranda music of Belize’s Garifuna people.
Screenshot of Araminta de Clermont’s photo essay on Guardian site
Araminta de Clermont explores the tattoos sported by members of South Africa’s notorious prison gangs. Tattoos, particularly facial, are a gesture of defiance to the prison authorities and show a prisoner’s status. The pigment is created by mixing burned paper, ground-up rubber washers or brick dust with saliva.
PUBLIC ART: New York Times slideshow, A Man in the Streets MLK murals across the US.
In America’s poorest ghettos, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s portrait is one of the most popular subjects of public art. These images, which I have been documenting since 1977, regularly appear on the walls of the liquor stores, auto-repair shops, fast-food restaurants, mom-and-pop stores and public housing projects of Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York and many other cities across the country. …. He is often accompanied by his famous phrase, “I have a dream” – a reminder that in many of the communities where these murals exist, the gulf between hope and reality remains far too wide. — Camilo José Vergara
The Talking Heads added a healthy dose of West African juju rhythms and American funk to the post-punk quirk of their landmark album “Remain in Light”. I’ve grown to have a deep respect for David Bryne who has continued to bring what I call “bastard music” from all over the world to western ears (via his label Luaka Bop), bridging the racial and cultural gaps created by the obsession with musical purity.
“Double Dutch”: Malcolm McLaren
…. This song though, adopts and African tune, and was recorded and sung by Zulus in Kwazululand, echoing names of famous New York High school teams like the ‘Ebonettes’, ‘Ford Green Angels’ and the ‘Five Town Diamond Skippers’.
Source: Album Notes from “Duck Rock“, Malcolm McLaren
The MNJ, Mouvement Nigerien pour la Justice (Nigerien Movement for Justice), is a Saharan rebel group founded in February 2007. It is a Tuareg group, based in Northern Niger. They have two main central claims. One is greater economic development, the other is a share of the region’s uranium profits.
Screenshot from “Cross River Nigeria” image series from Phyllis Galembo’s web site
Phyllis Galembo has an extensive series of portraits documenting the masks and costumes worn by priests and priestesses for religious rituals in Nigeria, Benin and in the diaspora from candomble in Brazil to voudou in Haiti. Her work is currently on show at the Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea.
MoMA: New Photography 2008, Mikhael Subotsky. The 2008 edition of the New Photography series at MoMA features new documentary work from South African Magnum photographer Mikhael Subotsky. “Beaufort West” features images inside and outside the prison of a small town in the Karoo Desert along the busy route between Cape Town and Johannesburg.
A group of preppy, polo shirt wearing, Ivy League-educated kids playing West African guitar-type driven indie-pop. That is Vampire Weekend. They sound like Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel back when world music was new and different, but the “world” in the music is part of its DNA, not just something grafted onto it. Reason # 211 about what is so great about this disorienting post-everything world we now live in.
Esau Mwamwaya: Tengazako (audio only)
Malawian expat Esau Mwamwaya, (he from the cover of Fader’s Africa issue) lives in the same London ‘hood as those folks from Radioclit who are collaborators with M.I.A. and ‘em. Last year after a chance encounter, Mwamwaya laid some vocals over the dancehall/hip hop/punk of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes“.
Roots Manuva: Let the Spirit
Rodney “Roots Manuva” Smith has been a purveyor Jamaican patois laced, soundsystem-inspired UK hip hop since the late 90’s. He is back with a new album “Slime and Reason” to be released late September Stato-side. WARNING: Profanity alert in the Intro and Outro. See also: Roots Manuva: Movements from “Brand New Second Hand” (1999).
Sign in shop window on Fredrick Douglass Avenue in Harlem
Saw the above sign in a window while out on a stroll in Harlem over the weekend and it made me think of “Hot Irons” Andrew Dosunmu’s documentary that covers some of the characters and out-of-this-world hair styles highlighted at the Hair Wars show in Detroit. Hair as art, as quoted in the movie trailer below.
Posted: September 8th, 2008 | Author:kamau | Filed under:film, photography | Comments Off
Nola’s Birthday Dance, from Spike Lee’s movie “She’s Gotta Have It”
The first art house film I saw was Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It”. While it was a breakthrough for both black and indie filmmaking, its most notorious legacy was its introduction to the world of that nerdy b-boy Nike spokesperson Mars Blackmon. I, er, bootlegged movie when it was released on VHS and I had the opportunity to watch it multiple times, so the score and dialog are etched on my brain.
So, this past weekend, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it has held up pretty well over the 22 years since it was released. Now that I live in NYC, it is doubly satisfying to recognize the locations where the film was shot around Brooklyn. There is the still photography of David Lee (Spike’s brother) showing a pre-gentrification Fort Greene. There is the jazz score by Spike’s dad Bill Lee. To this day, when I see a beautiful Black woman sashaying down the street ala Nola Darling, the score from the scene when Jamie and Nola meet automatically cues up in my internal soundtrack. The film was shot in black and white out of necessity (cheap film stock) but I can’t see it any other way now, and it makes the dance piece shot in color pop out in contrast. The dialog still sounds hackneyed, but it is so consistent it’s become part of the film’s aesthetic. At that time, it was still quite unusual for me see black folk doing “the wild thing” on screen (to quote Fab 5 Freddy from the “dog” montage in the film).
In the interim the dominant portrayal of Black women has gone from strong, independent black boho woman to video ho. The Black bohemian was marginalized even further by the “keepin’ it real” aesthetic that washed over Black pop culture courtesy of gangsta rap and thug life. While other filmmakers like the Wayans brothers, Robert Townsend, Hudlin Brothers followed in his footsteps, none succeeded like Spike in presenting real Black people with wit and insight. To me, “She’s Gotta Have It” is a part of the essential black film canon ala Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep“. Definitely worth watching (again).
Angela (played by Angela Burnett) and neighborhood boy in the film “Killer of Sheep”, a Milestone Film & Video release.
… these looks are the sole creation of the Surma and Mursi tribes of East Africa’s Omo Valley. Inspired by the wild trees, exotic flowers and lush vegetation of the area bordering Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan, these tribal people have created looks that put the most outlandish creations of Western catwalk couturiers to shame.
Ory Okolloh’s talk at TEDGlobal 2007 in Arusha Tanzania, 2007
TECHNO-ACTIVISM: Ory Okolloh: The Making of an Activist. Ory’s site Kenyan Pundit was the site of record for information on the post-election fracas in Kenya, she practically live blogged the events on the ground. In her talk she makes a great point about Africans creating original content or forfeiting the right to complain about how others portray us (a big reason that blog exists). She discusses how she became an activist as well as her work with the site Mzalendo that monitors the doings in Kenya’s parliament. More on TEDGlobal 2007: Africa the Next Chapter including writer Chris Abani’s talk on the importance of storytelling in rethinking the African narrative.
Trailer for Jerusalema directed by Ralph Ziman
FILM:Jerusalema. Tsotsi’s Rapulana Seiphemo switches sides from outraged middle class husband/dad to gangland boss ala Scarface in post-apartheid Hillbrow in Johannesburg. Mines the same themes of urban poverty and its repercussions as Fernando Meirelles’ Cidade de Deus Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi, Jose Padilha’s Tropa de Elite. Can’t wait to see this, will keep eyes peeled for Stateside release. [via afripop!]
See also: Johannesburg Series by South African Guy Tillim, a great photo essay on the decaying center of Jozi that forms the main location and is a central part of the plot in Jerusalema.
