One of Africa’s most important living photographers and contemporary artists, who photographs himself in the style of leading historical figures including Martin Luther King and Angela Davis, has won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize 2023.
The Cameroonian-born Nigerian photographer Samuel Fosso was awarded the £30,000 prize – one of the most prestigious in the industry – at the Photographers’ Gallery in London on Thursday.
The award was in recognition of Fosso’s retrospective exhibition, Samuel Fosso, at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, which traced a career spanning almost 50 years.
Shoair Mavlian, the director of the Photographers’ Gallery and chair of the Deutsche Börse jury, praised Fosso’s work for creating “an extraordinary platform for Black voices and artists throughout his career”.
Mavlian said Fosso’s sustained exploration of self-portraiture “uses a traditional, studio-based approach steeped in history, while at the same time his work remains relevant and addresses contemporary political issues of today with humour and authenticity”.
Raised in Nigeria, Fosso fled the Biafran war as a young boy, and in 1972 was taken in by an uncle in Bangui in the Central African Republic. In 1975, at the age of only 13, he opened his Studio Photo Nationale to take commercial portrait photographs. Initially, he made self-portraits to fill the unused parts of his photographic films but it became a mode of representation the artist has never abandoned.
“I started taking self-portraits simply to use up spare film; people wanted their photographs the next day, even if the roll wasn’t finished, and I didn’t like waste. The idea was to send some pictures to my mother in Nigeria, to show her I was all right,” he has previously told the Guardian.
“Then I saw the possibilities. I started trying different costumes, poses, backdrops. It began as a way of seeing myself grow up, and slowly it became a personal history – as well as art, I suppose. In 1994, there was an exhibition of African photography in Mali. I looked out some of my self-portraits, and won first prize. Now my work has been exhibited in Paris, New York, London.”
Described as “a man of 1,000 faces”, Fosso plays the role of leading historical figures in front of the camera, which also includes Mao Zedong, Malcolm X and Patrice Lumumba, demonstrating photography’s role in the construction of myths.
Anne-Marie Beckmann, the director of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, said Fosso’s retrospective “opened up new perspectives, allowing many more people to discover his work for the first time; and thrilled and surprised those who felt they already knew it”.
“Through the retrospective we were able to see his work differently and gain a much deeper understanding of the relevance of his practice today,” she said.
The jury also acknowledged the work of the other shortlisted artists – Bieke Depoorter, Arthur Jafa and Frida Orupabo, who received £5,000 each.
The exhibition showcasing all four artists is at the Photographers’ Gallery until 11 June.
