from fashion to politics and intimacy

The European House of Photography (MEP) is offering its first major retrospective to the Franco-Cameroonian photographer Samuel Fosso, known the world over for his staged self-portraits, sometimes ironic, often serious, which question African, Western and cultural identity standards. kind, without borders. You can see more than 300 prints, from his first studio portraits to his latest series.

For the first time, all of Samuel Fosso’s series, a dozen, as well as his studio photos are on display. In turn, he embodies historical characters, from Mao to Malcolm X, he stages himself in designer clothes, he imagines himself as a black pope, and finally he delivers himself without clothes or accessories in his masterful series. 666.

Samuel Fosso was born in 1962 in Cameroon where he spent his first two years. He suffers from a paralysis of the legs which Western medicine cannot cure. His mother takes him to Nigeria, where his grandfather lives, an Igbo tribal chief, who saves him with traditional medicine. In Nigeria, he found himself caught up in the Biafran war, before moving to the Central African Republic. He now lives between Paris and Bangui. Here is an overview of his best series.

Studio archives

After the death of his mother and grandfather in Nigeria, Samuel Fosso joined his uncle in Bangui in 1972. He worked for a while with him, who was a shoemaker. And then he discovers photography with a neighbor who trains him. Samuel Fosso was only thirteen when he opened his first studio in 1975.

In the tradition of the photo studio in West Africa, we have our portrait taken with family, friends, for special occasions or on a daily basis. This aspect of his work, unpublished, is exhibited in the form of large wallpapers. His negatives had disappeared when his studio in Bangui was looted in 2014, but an NGO found part of it by the side of a road and we can discover some of these images after their restoration by the City of Paris.

70’s Lifestyle (1970-1990)

From an early age, after his day of working with his clients, Samuel Fosso uses the last views of his films to take pictures of himself in his studio. He stages himself in a suit, in fringed pants, in elephant legs, in underwear, with sunglasses, in a floral shirt, on the phone. For 20 years, “he rethinks the studio space as a scenic space, where he experiments with different facets of his personality. Very young, he has a taste for fashion and accessories, for pop culture, and he challenges identity standards, he questions his sexuality and gender, with great freedom “, underlines Clothilde Morette, curator of the exhibition.

Tati (1997)

In his first self-portraits, Samuel Fosso explored different aspects of his own personality. When the Tati store, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, asks him, like Malick Sidibé and Seidou Keita, to recreate his studio in the Barbès store to photograph customers, he refuses. But he offers to put himself on the scene. And by using clothes and accessories on sale at Tati (he also uses the pink motif of the famous brand), this time it is archetypal characters from the Western imagination that he creates: The rocker, The bourgeois, The master- swimmer, The businessman, The pirate, and also The chief who sold Africa to the colonists, dressed in animal skins on a background of colored wax.

African Spirits (2008)

With African Spririts, this time, it pays tribute to 14 great black personalities who have marked history by putting themselves in their skin. Figures of the struggles for civil rights in the United States (Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King), heroes of African independence (Léopold Sedar Senghor, Patrice Lumumba …) or simply mythical figures of his personal pantheon or of the black pantheon (Miles Davis, Mohamed Ali, Seydou Keita…). He is extraordinary in these incarnations. He does not caption the images, leaving it to everyone to identify these characters that we will recognize or not, depending on whether they speak to us or not.

Samuel Fosso wants the public “wonders about these people who have made history, who are part of our history and that we do not necessarily manage to recognize. Either because the image is far enough from the representation that we are fact, or they are not part of our collective memory. It is precisely this collective memory that is questioned here “, explains Clothilde Morette.

Emperor of Africa (2013)

Samuel Fosso worked on another historical figure, that of Mao Ze-Dong. He embodies the Great Chinese Helmsman, between 1936 and 1966, in a series of six monumental images. “He was interested in the question of the image as a political fact, with its power as a factor of myth: what is the fictional part and what is the documentary part”, he wonders. The African continent appears on a flag and on an armband, because it also questions Sino-African relations and a form of neo-colonialism. Moreover, the series is called Emperor of Africa.

Black Pope (2017)

In this series of ten monumental images, Samuel Fosso invents a character that does not exist: a black pope. He went so far as to be dressed by the official Vatican tailor to be as close as possible to what a black pope could be. A role that he seems to take very seriously when he prays, blesses, greets, and collects himself. “The question of existence through images is for him something very deep”, comments Clothilde Morette. “He questions the fact that there is no black pope and wonders what he might look like.”

Memory of a Friend (2000)

This series, undoubtedly the most intimate, is very special in the production of Samuel Fosso. It had never been shown in France. While he is used to taking on roles, with clothes and accessories, there he literally gets naked. He imagined these images after the murder of a neighbor and friend by a militia in Bangui. In a minimal bedroom decor (a bed, a mosquito net), he imagines what his friend’s last night might have been like. With his naked body, he expresses the fragility, the vulnerability of the human being. His face expresses dread, fear.

666 (2015)

666 closes the exhibition. We were able to see this extraordinary series in 2020 at the Quai Branly museum, in its entirety. It is composed of 666 self-portraits stripped in large format Polaroid, in close-up on the face. Due to lack of space, a selection of 164 images is shown here. 666 was carried out in a few weeks after the looting in Bangui of the studio and the home of Samuel Fosso, in 2014. This event left him in a state of deep depression and this work marks his return to artistic life.

In these images, he expresses every human emotion imaginable. “It is a form of assessment of his whole life, explains the commissioner. Samuel Fosso is someone who has had a complex and difficult life. He lived the Biafran war as a child, he saw the people he loved disappear, he lived in exile. 666 is the number of the devil but for him it is at the same time all that there can be of worst and best, the great happinesses and the great sorrows, with all the nuances of emotion. “

Samuel Fosso
European House of Photography, 5/7 rue de Fourcy, Paris 4th
Every day except Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday and Friday 11 am-8pm. Thursday 11 am-10pm. Saturday and Sunday 10 am-8pm.
Prices: 10 € / 6 €
From November 10, 2021 to husbands 13, 2022