EP11: 21st Century Photographers Re-articulate The Continent – with Ekow Eshun
02/20/21 • 53 min
In this episode of Dots of Thoughts Podcast, Emeka Okereke is joined by Ekow Eshun to reflect on the book, “Africa State of Mind” edited by Ekow Eshun and published by Thames & Hudson. The book brings together works from 52 contemporary photographers from Africa.
Fundamental to the book is Ekow Eshun’s intention to “explore how contemporary photographers have presented Africanness and Africa as a physiological space as much as a physical space”.
The conversation departs from the book’s periodical marker: all photographic works were made in the 21st century. It would meander across various topics while touching on conceptual considerations in the works of such photographers as François-Xavier Gbré, Hicham Gardaf, Eric Gyamfi and Lebohang Kganye.
A recurrent point of consensus is that the works included in the book exemplify how today’s photographers are articulating the complex narrative of African realities. Not only do their work offer a unique yet critical gaze, but it also rescues the photographic medium from its colonial history and deployment.
“There is no simplicity or singleness to Africanness”, Ekow says. One might think that this needn’t be said in 2021. This is precisely what this book hopes to achieve: These photographers show that such concerns have become secondary to image-makers of today.
“If we say black is beautiful, it’s like these photographers are saying: we must question what beauty means”, Emeka adds.
Where are Contemporary photographic practices from the African continent heading or pointing to?
This question brings the podcast conversation towards the end while leaving enough room to account for whatever the future holds.
Use the time stamps to skip to parts of the podcast.
Listen on: https://nkatapodcast.com
Also on: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Overcast, Deezer and more than ten other podcast platforms.
Host: Emeka Okereke (Barcelona)
Guest: Ekow Eshun (London)
Production: E.O Multimedia
Music: Sir Kupeski DJ.
Supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds Germany
Created during the Research Residency Program at The Over | Pol & Grace Barcelona
Hi, amazing listeners! Emeka Okereke here. I am the founder and host of this show. If you’ve enjoyed the stories, insights, and creativity we bring to this podcast series, I invite you to join my Patreon community at patreon.com/EmekaOkereke. 🎉
By becoming a patron, you’ll gain exclusive access to my artistic world, including:
• Behind-the-scenes content from my photography projects.
• Sneak peeks of upcoming films, vlogs, and video podcasts.
• Exclusive DJ playlists curated just for you.
• Bonus podcast episodes and a chance to contribute to future topics.
Whether you’re a fan of the podcast, my visual storytelling, or simply love art and creativity, there’s a tier for you. Your support helps me continue creating high-quality content, and it truly means the world to me.
Thank you for listening. Follow Nkata Podcast Station on Instagram @nkatapodcast and Twitter.
See the website for extensive materials: nkatapodcast.com
In this episode of Dots of Thoughts Podcast, Emeka Okereke is joined by Ekow Eshun to reflect on the book, “Africa State of Mind” edited by Ekow Eshun and published by Thames & Hudson. The book brings together works from 52 contemporary photographers from Africa.
Fundamental to the book is Ekow Eshun’s intention to “explore how contemporary photographers have presented Africanness and Africa as a physiological space as much as a physical space”.
The conversation departs from the book’s periodical marker: all photographic works were made in the 21st century. It would meander across various topics while touching on conceptual considerations in the works of such photographers as François-Xavier Gbré, Hicham Gardaf, Eric Gyamfi and Lebohang Kganye.
A recurrent point of consensus is that the works included in the book exemplify how today’s photographers are articulating the complex narrative of African realities. Not only do their work offer a unique yet critical gaze, but it also rescues the photographic medium from its colonial history and deployment.
“There is no simplicity or singleness to Africanness”, Ekow says. One might think that this needn’t be said in 2021. This is precisely what this book hopes to achieve: These photographers show that such concerns have become secondary to image-makers of today.
“If we say black is beautiful, it’s like these photographers are saying: we must question what beauty means”, Emeka adds.
Where are Contemporary photographic practices from the African continent heading or pointing to?
This question brings the podcast conversation towards the end while leaving enough room to account for whatever the future holds.
Use the time stamps to skip to parts of the podcast.
Listen on: https://nkatapodcast.com
Also on: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Overcast, Deezer and more than ten other podcast platforms.
Host: Emeka Okereke (Barcelona)
Guest: Ekow Eshun (London)
Production: E.O Multimedia
Music: Sir Kupeski DJ.
Supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds Germany
Created during the Research Residency Program at The Over | Pol & Grace Barcelona
Hi, amazing listeners! Emeka Okereke here. I am the founder and host of this show. If you’ve enjoyed the stories, insights, and creativity we bring to this podcast series, I invite you to join my Patreon community at patreon.com/EmekaOkereke. 🎉
By becoming a patron, you’ll gain exclusive access to my artistic world, including:
• Behind-the-scenes content from my photography projects.
• Sneak peeks of upcoming films, vlogs, and video podcasts.
• Exclusive DJ playlists curated just for you.
• Bonus podcast episodes and a chance to contribute to future topics.
Whether you’re a fan of the podcast, my visual storytelling, or simply love art and creativity, there’s a tier for you. Your support helps me continue creating high-quality content, and it truly means the world to me.
Thank you for listening. Follow Nkata Podcast Station on Instagram @nkatapodcast and Twitter.
See the website for extensive materials: nkatapodcast.com
Previous Episode
EP10: Time does not pass. We, on the other hand, pass through it - and make forms of it (Part 3) with J. Redza
In this episode of "Time Does Not Pass. We, on the other hand, pass through it - and make forms of it", Emeka Okereke (Berlin) is in conversation with J. Redza (Kuala Lumpur). They reflect on the idea of Time in relation to age(ing).
This episode can be best described as a "rumination between millennials". Emeka Okereke and J. Redza were born on the same year (1980, Kaduna Nigeria, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) - a coincidence that preceded their encounter in 2006 over the internet. Insofar as they are yet to meet in person, this conversation builds on their relationship forged in the umbilical Time portal sustained by cyber connection. They managed to share what Emeka Okereke called "a communal time-zone" over 14 years.
What does this kind of connection mean as we head further into the subjectivist era of the 21st century? What is the foremost millennials' role in bridging the gap between a post-generation and the future generations of the world? What does it feel like to be forty – both as a man and a woman – in our Time? Is forty the new thirty as the younger generation become less conservative and gradually removed from the previous generation's cautious disposition?
J. Redza offers a few suggestions for a better appraisal of these thoughts:
"We are still in the consciousness place where we are learning how to use the internet. We need to be more conscious of how we use the internet rather than how it uses us".
"In many different cultures, we talk about fate, and that there are many circles in life. This I find fascinating. So I don't see things in a linear way."
"Despite what you want to do in life or online [cyberspace], the basis is your sense of who you are; it has to be very strong."
The conversation rounds up with the need to be grounded in oneself. To be disciplined. And finally to consider that if one has good health, it translates to the wealth of Time. Yet this kind of wealth cannot be saved in a deposit box or a bank account. It is to be used every day – in the present.
Host: Emeka Okereke (Berlin)
Guest: J. Redza (Kuala Lumpur)
Production: E.O Multimedia LTD.
Album Art: J. Redza Art
Music: DJ Kupeski.
Timestamps:
0:00: Introduction by Emeka Okereke
3:47: J. Redza joins the conversation via Zoom
6:29: It's as if we have known each other since
Hi, amazing listeners! Emeka Okereke here. I am the founder and host of this show. If you’ve enjoyed the stories, insights, and creativity we bring to this podcast series, I invite you to join my Patreon community at patreon.com/EmekaOkereke. 🎉
By becoming a patron, you’ll gain exclusive access to my artistic world, including:
• Behind-the-scenes content from my photography projects.
• Sneak peeks of upcoming films, vlogs, and video podcasts.
• Exclusive DJ playlists curated just for you.
• Bonus podcast episodes and a chance to contribute to future topics.
Whether you’re a fan of the podcast, my visual storytelling, or simply love art and creativity, there’s a tier for you. Your support helps me continue creating high-quality content, and it truly means the world to me.
Thank you for listening. Follow Nkata Podcast Station on Instagram @nkatapodcast and Twitter.
See the website for extensive materials: nkatapodcast.com
Next Episode
EP12: Memory, Performance, Healing and Celebration in the Photographic works of Lebohang Kganye.
In the 12th Episode of Dots of Thoughts, Emeka Okereke reflects on the photographic work of Lebohang Kganye. Ke Lefa Laka: Her-story, was realised in 2013. It explores the relationship between Lebohang Kganye and her mother, who passed on three years earlier. She employs the techniques of double exposure and superimposition to “re-enter” the life of her mother and to seek out a space of communality between the living and the dead, between the past and the present wherein “she is me, I am her and there remains in this commonality so much difference, and so much distance in space and time”.
In reflecting on this body of work, Emeka Okereke writes on Instagram:
“I find this series enigmatically powerful. I appreciate the artist’s uncomplicated use of the photographic medium in the bridging of the past and present without closing off the space lost to imperceptible, ungraspable emotions – all of which reinforces the intimacy we can only sense but not necessarily understand.
I find myself dwelling on the ambiguous duality captured in this work – reminiscent of the spiritual concept of the holy trinity, but in this case, between a daughter and mother.
Yet, I am reminded of the concept of duality, of dependability, of invisibility in the worldview of the Igbo people: where one thing stands, something else stands beside it.”
This statement became the prompt to reach out to Lebohang and expound on these strands of thoughts, which is this podcast episode.
Listen to Lebohang Kganye as she takes us through some of the thought processes behind the work. In the conversation, she asserts:
More than anything, the work also provides a space for therapy and for healing.
As much as it is about loss, it is also about celebration.
In that navigation of guilt [of loss] is also a celebration of a person.
Listen to the full episode on nkatapodcast.com.
Also available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Deezer, Google Podcast and over ten other podcast platforms.
Follow the podcast on these platforms to get notified when new episodes go live.
Use the time stamps to navigate to parts of the podcast. Also, listen to the podcast alongside Lebohang Kganye's website: https://www.lebohangkganye.co.za/
Want to join a growing community
Hi, amazing listeners! Emeka Okereke here. I am the founder and host of this show. If you’ve enjoyed the stories, insights, and creativity we bring to this podcast series, I invite you to join my Patreon community at patreon.com/EmekaOkereke. 🎉
By becoming a patron, you’ll gain exclusive access to my artistic world, including:
• Behind-the-scenes content from my photography projects.
• Sneak peeks of upcoming films, vlogs, and video podcasts.
• Exclusive DJ playlists curated just for you.
• Bonus podcast episodes and a chance to contribute to future topics.
Whether you’re a fan of the podcast, my visual storytelling, or simply love art and creativity, there’s a tier for you. Your support helps me continue creating high-quality content, and it truly means the world to me.
Thank you for listening. Follow Nkata Podcast Station on Instagram @nkatapodcast and Twitter.
See the website for extensive materials: nkatapodcast.com
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