| As in all my works, I am both character and director. I don’t put myself in the photographs: my work is based on specific situations and people I am familiar with, things I desire, which I rework in my imagination and afterward, I interpret. I borrow an identity. In order to succeed I immerse myself in the necessary physical and mental state. It’s a way of freeing me from myself. A solitary path. I am a solitary man. African Spirits, a series of 14 auto-portraits, has been shown for the first time in the last edition of the Rencontres d’Arles Photographie. This puts together my concept of re-interpreting photographic icons of the great cultural leaders and minds from the African independent states, civil rights movement in the U.S., and black cultural monuments. |  |
Samuel Fosso
As in all my works, I am both character and director. I don’t put myself in the photographs: my work is based on specific situations and people I am familiar with, things I desire, which I rework in my imagination and afterward, I interpret. I borrow an identity. In order to succeed I immerse myself in the necessary physical and mental state. It’s a way of freeing me from myself. A solitary path. I am a solitary man.
African Spirits, a series of 14 auto-portraits, has been shown for the first time in the last edition of the Rencontres d’Arles Photographie. This puts together my concept of re-interpreting photographic icons of the great cultural leaders and minds from the African independent states, civil rights movement in the U.S., and black cultural monuments. In my pantheon are Mandela, Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Miles Davis, Martin Luther King, Seydou Keita, Angela Davis, N’Krumah, Lumumba, Tommie Smith, Haïlé Sélassié, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ali.
