random goodness, 9/24

PHOTOGRAPHY: Staged Realities: The studio in African photography 1870-2004

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

PHOTOGRAPHY: Guardian slide show Prison Ink:

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.

[kofia tip: Sci-Cultura]

Martin Luther King Mural on 116th Street, Harlem

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