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Autoportrait is the first comprehensive survey of self-portraits by Samuel Fosso, one of the most significant African photographic artists working today. Since the mid-1970s, Fosso has focused on self-portraiture and performance, envisioning variations of identity in the postcolonial era. Spanning his early black-and-white self-portraits through to his most recent, continually inventive exercises in self-presentation, highlights from his remarkable body of work include the vibrant and colorful series "Tati" (1997), in which Fosso playfully inhabits a range of African and African American characters and archetypes, and the magisterial "African Spirits" (2008), wherein he poses, with uncanny precision, as icons of the pan-African liberation and civil rights movements, such as Nelson Mandela and Angela Davis.
With new essays and research by leading scholars and writers, Autoportrait demonstrates Fosso's unique departure from the traditions of West African studio photography, established in the 1950s and 1960s by modern masters Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibé. By charting his conceptual practice of self-portraiture and his sustained engagement with notions of sexuality, gender, and self-representation, this landmark monograph reveals an unprecedented photographic project - one that has consistently reflected and commemorated themes in global visual culture and covered a range of expressive applications of the photographic medium.
