As in previous years, Bamako has two main objectives. The first is to present an overview
of contemporary African photography, a particularly outstanding art on the creative scene of the continent, which is only now beginning to receive the attention its cultural and artistic vitality deserves. The second is to showcase the importance of the Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie, a biennial event which, after seven outings, is now consolidated as one of Africa’s biggest artistic meeting points.
With these objectives as its base, and thanks to an agreement with the organizing bodies of the Rencontres in Bamako, the show at the CCCB presents the pick of the 2007 event: some 200 photographs and a selection of original videos, and printed and film documentation.
With the title “In the City and Beyond”, most of the seventh Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie de Bamako centers on the theme of the urban phenomenon. The urban phenomenon rather than the city because, over and beyond the usual reductive views that see cities as material, functional structures and devices, they are, in reality, fundamentally networks of relations between individuals and social groups.
|
