He is one of the greatest exponents of the self-portrait. Samuel Fosso, born on July 17, 1962 in Kumba, in the south-west of Cameroon, has enriched the history of photography with his unexpected and iconoclastic works which echo African history and impose themselves on us. Until March 13, the European House of Photography in Paris pays tribute to the autodidact in an impressive retrospective.
He looks very discreet, looks attentively, moves quietly and speaks in a low voice. But where others would say: “I take a photo”, he speaks of “filming”. All is said. In his instantly recognizable self-portraits, Samuel Fosso transforms each shot into a sort of “1-image-film”.
Today, this virtuoso director of his own image shares his life between France and Nigeria. Born with a physical disability, as a child, he was not entitled to the photos and tender gazes of his family. At the age of five, he lost his mother and took refuge with his grandparents in the forest. His family, of the Ibo ethnic group, will be persecuted during the Biafra war. And in his family, Samuel will be the only child of his age to have survived. At the age of ten, he joined his brother in Bangui, in the Central African Republic. He worked there first as a shoemaker, then as an apprentice photographer, before opening his own studio, at the age of 13, under the original promise: ” With Studio National, you will be beautiful, chic, delicate and easy to recognize. “.
Very quickly, he uses his talents for the disguise and the staging of his own self-portraits, made on the remains of film of his clients. Thus, for decades he has sublimated the art of self-portraiture and declined it in series that have become famous: 70’s lifestyle, Tati, My grandfather’s dream, African Spirits Where Black Pope.
RFI : Why did you become a photographer ?
Samuel Fosso : It was a dream to become a photographer. Very young, I already wanted to be a photographer. At the age of seven, I asked my eldest to be a photographer and to be able to take my own photos. It is the world of photographers that pushed me to be a photographer.
What is a good photo for you ?
The good photo for me is to do the best. I was doing commercial photos, so for my clients. In good photos, you have to know how to film first, and secondly develop well. And maybe also develop the print that matters in the lab. For me, that’s it: a well-made photo is a good photo.
Between exposure time and aperture, where is your priority in photography? ?
The most important thing is the opening, capturing the lights. First, there is a difference between the opening of the studio with artificial light, and the opening to the outside concerning daylight. Both vary. Normally the most important thing is the aperture to catch the daylight, so that it matches the subject you are shooting.
When did you first decide to stage and transform to take a picture of yourself? ?
Taking a self-portrait started at the very beginning, when I started my commercial photography at the studio. It is this idea of taking my own picture that also pushed me to become a photographer. Because I had missed this opportunity when I was a child. I didn’t have a picture of me when I was a baby or a child. So, I found this opportunity to film myself and to send this photo to my parents. I was in the Central African Republic and my parents and my grandparents wanted to see me. So, I made the picture so I could send it and they would see me.
You have been doing self-portraits for 50 years, often staging transformations of your own person. After half a century of self-portraits, do you finally know who you are? ?
In the 1970s, I didn’t do photography for the exhibition, because I wasn’t as much of an artist as I am today, and I didn’t know that photography was also an art. On the other hand, since I became known as an artist who goes around the world, I started doing performances. I’m not saying transformations, but performances – on the story that interests me. It can be to tell a character or to which I want to pay homage. From there, I started reproducing other subjects that were not me, but which I embodied. I then become an artist-photographer who makes certain transformations.
Your famous series Tatiproduced in 1997 for the 50th anniversary of the French brand, what has it changed for you as a photographer ?
In the beginning, the photographs for Tati weren’t really taken into account, it came later. Afterwards, everyone thought that this story was part of my 20 famous photographs, even before the series African Spirit [mettant en scène des penseurs et libérateurs comme Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Patrice Lumumba ou Angela Davis, NDLR]. Tati is part of this story, The liberated African woman, African leaders have sold out Africa… People have understood the importance of this and the story continues for the whole world.
You had to flee the war twice, as a child, and in 2014, when the civil war also hit your home in Bangui. How is your wartime experience reflected in your works ?
The war I went through has nothing to do with what I did. On the other hand, the war destroyed what I did. When I was a child, the Biafra war, I suffered from it as a child of war. And in the Central African Republic, recently, I suffered, because my negatives were completely looted, trampled on, and we were only able to recover some of them thanks to journalists who passed by. But my studio and my house in Bangui have been destroyed, looted, ransacked, so the war brings me bad luck. But God is always with me and always tries to save my life. It also gave me the strength to keep taking pictures. The most important thing was always that I was not a victim in all these events that I spent: the war, the eruption of the volcano when I was in Reunion, the bloody attacks when I had my exhibition in Bombay, in India. I have always been saved and this gives me strength to continue with my works and tell these stories.
When you started with photography, in the 1960s, there were already very well-known photographers on the African continent, such as Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé or JD Okhai Ojeikere. Did you have models to develop your photographic approach ?
Of course, there was Seydou Keïta, the eldest, and Malick Sidibé, the eldest, but I didn’t know them, because there was a great distance. I was in the Central African Republic and they were in West Africa. I met these photographers during the first exhibitions in 1994. There were also photographers in the Central African Republic and it was thanks to these photographers that I learned photography. I asked them to teach me photography. I pay a lot of tribute to these former African photographers who allowed me to be a photographer, and beyond that photographer-artist.
With African Spirit, you have also worked on the visual history of Africa. You yourself have experienced all the stages of photographic history in Africa since the 1970s, the birth of the Bamako Encounters, the exhibitions The Magicians of the Earth, AfricaRemix and Africa Capitals which have made history, right up to the major retrospective of your work at the European House of Photography. What is for you today the place of African photography in art in general? ?
A very important place, if I compare it with the time before. At the first African Photographic Meetings in Bamako, people said to me: Samuel, this event is temporary, after two years it will be forgotten. Today, the African photographer, the African artist-photographers, have as great a place as Western artists. So Africa has taken on a lot of scope. African photography has taken off a lot all over the world. African photography has a solid place today, but I also think tomorrow. Today, we cannot talk about photography without talking about African photography. So African photography has a big place in the world.