Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination – Hardcover Book

Edited by Oluremi C. Onabanjo. Contributions by Brent Hayes Edwards, Momtaza Mehri, V.Y. Mudimbe, Yasmina Price

A rich examination of the role of portrait photography in the construction of Africa as a political idea

The independence movements that swept the African continent in the 1960s coincided with an exhilarating campaign for civil rights in the United States. These transformative struggles, reverberating across the Atlantic and beyond, formed a call and response that established “Africa” as a political idea. Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination examines the role of portrait photography within this emerging sense of Pan-Africanism, bringing together photographs by inventive image-makers from West and Central Africa—including Jean Depara, Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé, and Sanlé Sory—alongside contemporary works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Samuel Fosso, and Silvia Rosi.