+profile. photography exhibition

Boubacar Touré Mandemory, Couleurs de Peche,
from “Quotidiens D’Ailleurs” (Daily Life), Dakar, Senegal, 2005
Collection of the International Center of Photography

snap judgements
african photography exhibition
@ international center for photography
+phillip harvey

When Okwui Enwezor left Nigeria to attend Jersey College in Newark, New Jersey he brought more than his school books and a passport. He brought a vision of the world that places cosmopolitan Africa at its center, intellectually moving the continent from the fringes of global discussions of modernity to the central thematic point. Socially, politically and culturally Enwezor has painted wide swaths of Red, Black and Green in places typically devoid of color.

Return to a few of the mammoth curatorial efforts Enwezor has now made dom rigueur over the last decade and some change and you will get the gist of what I am saying.

Look back at The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945- 1994, where Enwezor placed decolonization in its rightful position as one of the most significant historical events of the 20 th century,

And

Documenta 11, where Enwezor, Documenta’s first nonwhite and non-European artistic director, used his global stage to pointedly comment on the social and political confusion that has ensued since the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of globalization,

And

In/sight: African Photographers, 1940- Present, where Enwezor staged the first exhibition beyond the borders of Africa that celebrated the work of photographers that came to prominence during the years in which African states were claiming independence.

Take a look at all of that and you will see that Enwezor’s curatorial efforts have been so focused that they now extend beyond even the political and social themes he has so famously infused into his work. They are vehicles to spread the word and give voice to generations of voices that were once ignored but now have been channeled into the expressions of a chosen lot and framed in the form of installations.

That is a lot to handle. A burden few would be able to withstand. But luckily Enwezor tucked more than some books in that bag when he came to the US some 25 years ago. Luckily he brought a vision with him.

Snap Judgments will examine the ways in which recent photographic art has moved beyond both African traditions and Western influences to explore new aesthetic territories. The exhibition will present over 200 works by 35 artists from a dozen countries . Encompassing the African continent from the Muslim cultures of North Africa to the sub-Saharan nations of the south, Snap Judgments will feature a range of highly individual artistic responses to the enormous changes now taking place in economic, social, and cultural life throughout Africa.

Snap Judgements will be on display from March 10- May 28. 200 @ The International Center of Photography. 1133 Avenue of the Americas @ 43rd Street NYC.