Never prescriptive or sanctimonious, every edition is as rare and juicy as a pomegranate, delighting in the modernity and contradictions abundant in contemporary African culture. Revue Noire is about believing in tomorrow s world through the works of photographers, artists, sculptors, filmmakers, musicians, designers and writers from Africa, the Caribbean and the major cities of the African Diaspora. Each of its quarterly editions deals with a country, a group of countries or a theme. Our aim is not to be the final exploration of African photography. It is the opposite of that.
Much work remains unearthed or unexhibited.
The exhibition has been structured around five seminal themes, from the earliest years of the introduction of the camera to Africa to the photojournalistic work of the post-colonial era and the more experimental contemporary work. A section titled The Precursors Paint the Portrait features the portraiture of photographers like Mama Casset from Senegal and Cornelius Augustt Azaglo from the Ivory Coast dating from the 1950s to the 1980s. Independence, official photos and the lightheartedness of freedom is a section featuring the work of South Africa s Billy Monk, Mozambique s Ricardo Rangel and Zaire s Oscar Mbemba among others. South Africans like Omar Badsha, Gideon Mendel and Peter Magubane feature strongly in the committed photography category along with photographers from Angola, Mozambique, Mali, Zaire and the Ivory Coast. Then there s research photography featuring Santu Mofokeng and David Goldblatt alongside Pierrot Men from Madagascar and Elise Fitte-Duval from Martinique.