Berlin

They are images – both still and motion – from out of Africa, alright. But they are above all works by 11 African photographers, which are not only based on the African environment but also on its perspectives. Spot On…Bamako (VII. Rencontres Africaine de la Photographie), the curatorial brainchild of the Nigerian-born curator and photographer, Akinbode Akinbiyi, brings to a German art audience an abridged peek into an African biennial event that has already breasted the tape of its seventh edition.

Not that the provenance of these works was ever in question in any case. But Simon Njami, who curated the biennial’s last edition, deemed it necessary in his brief introduction to call the works what they really are: photographs by Africans not African photographs.

Sad to note, the continent even with its ample paradisial endowments has become synonymous with images of distress and sub-human existence. Hence the significance of Akinbiyi’s curatorial input, which directs the gaze away from the predictable Dantesque images. This is even when the exhibition, at the same time, does not relapse into the visual equivalent of a Negritudinal eulogy. And that may be why the Ethiopian, Aida Muluneh, offers us another perspective of her country as one whose citizens live a normal life. This is in contrast with the images of famine-stricken children for which the horn of Africa country has been known for. Her offering prepares us better for a better appreciation of Michael Tsegaye’s photographs of people and landscape shrouded in fog. We discern the rustic traditional Ethiopian people and landscape.

Call Spot On… a dispassionate visual offering of Africa, Africans and – I mustn’t forget to add– by Africans and you won’t be far off the mark. South Africa’s Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko, with her Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder series, challenges our perceptions of what we might deem beautiful. But then you may wonder from where her ebony-complexioned subjects, clad as they are in garish colours, derive the confidence they seem to exude. Yet, her compatriot, Jodi Bieber, could not avoid feasting on the infernal images a netherworld populated by drug addicts. She pans her camera lens away from the continent and rather scoured for her images of distress in the Spanish Valencia.

Through his hard-to-ignore photomontages, the Congolese-born Sammy Baloji brusquely returns our attention to the continent. With both contemporary and file images, he recreates the colonial heritage of his copper-mining native Katanga province. History, for him, is a tool for reminding his audience that the masses have been groaning under the scourge of this same hydra-headed monster for decades.

Berry Bickle has other uses for history. For the Zimbabwean-born artist, the word draws from one huge power centre nourished by rivulets of individual experiences. The incessant fusion and refining of diverse elements leads to the path of perfection and, this, the artist examines as she explores the impact of mobility on a society. Perhaps this is why the theme of relocation – or is it dislocation – resonates through Malian-born Mohammed Camara’s engaging self-portraits. The Blackman in one of the photographs, clad only in long thermal underpants, certainly looks out of place in his snow-covered environment. Lonely in his greener-pasture environment, he seeks to draw strength from the once discarded wisdom of his roots. Metaphorically speaking, he is very much like the cactus which thrives in the desert.

And the human spirit remains irrepressible even in the slum districts of Soavina Ramaroson’s Antananarivo. The Madagascan draws our attention to a thriving humanity in the most inhospitable conditions.

As for the Burkina Faso-born Saidou Dicko, the metaphor of fixing ephemeral images for posterity takes an entirely different meaning. His Voleur d’Ombre (Shadow Thief) series is a creative way of telling real life stories about no one in particular. In each one of this one-time shepherd boy’s images, the viewer is confronted with the sanguine innocence of his childhood. Shadows in his world are not always threatening nor do they even portend evil.

Ifa-Galerie, Linienstr. 139, until 11.1. Tuesday to Friday, Sunday 2-8 pm, Saturday 12am-8 pm