MoMA explores how African studio portraits offered a new vision of freedom

"When young men and women stepped into studio backdrops to have their photograph taken in Bamako, Kinshasa and Accra in the 1950s and 60s, they were doing more than dressing up for the camera. With their pressed suits, patterned dresses, sunglasses and poise, they were performing independence. This idea is central to a survey of West and Central African portrait photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York."

"Bringing together dozens of such scenes, it suggests these pictures did something larger still: they helped shape a political imagination for Black people on either side of the Atlantic, forging new freedoms and identities. Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination shows studio portraits by James Barnor, Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé, with later works by Jean Depara, Sanlé Sory and Kwame Brathwaite, alongside contemporary works by Samuel Fosso, Silvia Rosi and the collective Air Afrique, to name a few."

Studio portraits from Bamako, Kinshasa and Accra in the 1950s and 60s show young people using clothing, accessories and pose to perform independence and modern selfhood. Collectively, these images helped shape a political imagination for Black people across the Atlantic, forging new freedoms and identities. The assembled works trace a transnational language of confident optimism that travelled from newly independent African countries to the streets of London and New York. The exhibition frames studio photography as a creative, imaginative act rather than a documentary record and highlights transgenerational continuities and diasporic exchanges.

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