Life and Death in Benin: Work by African Photographers from the Alex Van Gelder Collection
3 June to 21 August 2005
Alex Morel: In the Still of the Afternoon
3 June to 21 August 2005
The Dream of Myself, the Dream of the World: Set 2 from the collection of the Fotomuseum Winterthur
12 March to 9 October 2005
Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstrasse 44 45
CH-8400 Winterthur (Zurich)
T 41 52 234 10 60
F 41 52 233 60 97
fotomuseum [at] fotomuseum.ch
Tue - Sun 11am-6pm / Wed 11am-8pm
In the one hundred and fifty kilometre-wide coastal strip of the Gulf of Bénin stretching from Togo via Bénin to Lagos in Nigeria, a densely populated and arbitrarily growing economic area is currently developing, which the Dutch architect and urban planner Rem Koolhaas is already extolling as a visionary new metropolis. In the middle of the last century, Bénin and its neighbouring countries were already experiencing the first explosive innovative impetus. Along the Ivory Coast, on the sea route from Europe to India, first contacts with modern means of communi-cation were made in Bénin’s ports (Porto-Novo, Cotonou and Ouidah) following growing trade movements before complete independence was gained in 1960. One of these modern means of communi-cation was photography, which found its place in the African public conscious-ness and as it were embodied this impetus at the same time as the new social departure.
Whereas it was above all the French colonial lords who used photography, which they had introduced into the country at the beginning of the century after political independence had been gained, the photographers who had hitherto been trained in the country took over the abandoned studios and founded some of their own. And these photographers made portraits of children, of First Communions, of weddings and the one central portrait; and they photographed deathbeds, the union of the relatives in the final ceremony, and the ritual at the bedside of the dead person. They were itinerant photographers who took portraits of people in front of their own homes, they were studio photographers in the towns who placed people in front of their self-painted back-grounds, in front of aeroplanes and household furnishings. All the photographers whose work is contained in the collection of Alex van Gelder worked in Bénin between the 1960s and the 1980s, among them the photographers represented in the exhibition: Benoît Adjovi, Jean Agbétagbo, Joseph Moïse Agbodjélou, Bouraïma Akodji, Léon Ayékoni, Jean Dotonou, Christophe Mahoukpé, Sébastien Méhinto (known as Pigeon), Edouard Méhomé, Jacob Chike Osiwe (known as Sungas), Camille Tchawlassou and Justin D. Tomety. And for many of the people portrayed, the moment of being photographed remained unforgettable because, firstly, it was usually the only time that they could ever afford a portrait and secondly, it was the portrait that would be placed on or beside their deathbed at the final ceremony, because the soul of the deceased appeared to emanate from it once again. These particularly intensive portraits show different people and tribes in Bénin during the transition to the postcolonial era.
An exhibition by the Fotomuseum Winterthur. Curator: Urs Stahel.
The exhibition will be accompanied by the book Life and Afterlife in Bénin, published by Phaidon Press. With texts by Alex Van Gelder, Thomas Seelig and Okwui Enwezor. 136 pages, 93 duplex illustrations. Exhibition-price CHF 65.-
Main sponsor: Pick Pay
With the support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation SDC.
