Autoportrait (Relié)

Biographie de Samuel Fosso

Born in Kumba, West Cameroon, in 1962 to Nigerian parents, Samuel Fosso fled Nigeria and the Biafran War, seeking refuge in Bangui in the Central African Republic. At the age of thirteen, he opened his own commercial photography studio there, which he operated until 2014. Alongside his studio-portrait practice, Fosso began a series of self-portraits, a mode of representation that he would never abandon and would gradually take on a universal social and political dimension.
His photographs have been acquired by distinguished institutions such as the Tate, London ; the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris ; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Walther Collection holds the largest collection of Fosso's work worldwide. Okwui Enwezor (1963-2019) was a preeminent curator, scholar, writer, and critic whose work focused on global contemporary art and African photography in particular.
Enwezor achieved several of the art world's highest honors : in 2002, he organized Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany, and in 2015, he was chosen to serve as Artistic Director of the 56th Venice Biennale. Throughout his career, Enwezor also curated a number of landmark institutional exhibitions, which helped to engineer a profound reconsideration of the arts and culture of the African continent and diaspora.
The Walther Collection is an art foundation dedicated to the critical understanding of historical and contemporary photography and related media. Through a program of original research, in-depth collecting, scholarly publications, and large-scale exhibitions, The Walther Collection aims to highlight the social uses of photography and to expand the history of the medium. At its three-building campus in Neu-Ulm, Germany, at its Project Space in New York, and in its traveling installations worldwide, The Walther Collection presents thematic and monographic exhibitions drawn from its expansive holdings of modern and contemporary photography and media art from Africa, China, Japan, Europe, and the Americas, as well as vernacular lens-based imagery from across the globe.
The collection's exhibition program is complemented by public lectures and screenings, international scholarly symposia, nd a critically acclaimed series of catalogues and monographs copublished by Steidl.