Autoportrait is the first comprehensive survey of self-portraits by Samuel Fosso, one of the most significant African photographic artists working today. Since the mid-1970s, Fosso has focused on self-portraiture and performance, envisioning variations of identity in the postcolonial era, reflecting themes in global visual culture, and covering the range of expressive applications of the photographic medium.
SIXSIXSIX is dedicated to an extraordinary series of 666 large-scale Polaroids by Samuel Fosso. Made in his Paris studio between October and November 2015, these portraits further emphasize the particular themes of performance and identity construction epitomized in Fosso’s earlier self-portraits. The impressive size and volume of this book, featuring an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, courses a new trajectory in Fosso’s work: an encounter with the camera that is unmediated, repetitive, unabridged, and effected over space and time.
Jo Ractliffe, Photographs: 1980s to now is the first book to present a comprehensive selection of the work of South African photographer Jo Ractliffe. Looking back over the past 35 years, it brings together images from major photo-essays, as well as early works that have not been seen before. Described by Okwui Enwezor as “one of the most accomplished and under-rated photographers of her generation,” Ractliffe started working in the early 1980s, and her photographs continue to reflect her preoccupation with the South African landscape and the ways in which it figures in the country’s imaginary—particularly the violent legacies of apartheid. In 2007 she extended her interests to the war in Angola and published three photobooks on the aftermath of that conflict and its manifestations in the South African landscape: Terreno Ocupado (2008), As Terras do Fim do Mundo (2010) and The Borderlands (2015).