Samuel Fosso : Photographs

7 Jun-6 Jul 2013

Overview

I've been taking pictures in my studio since 14 September 1975, when I was 13 years old. I was bored. I asked a photographer in the studio next to me where we lived in Bangui, in the Central African Republic, if he would take me on, and he said yes. I worked with him for five months, then opened my own place for passport and portrait and wedding photographs. 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. 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 a 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.