Samuel Fosso

Samuel Fosso is one of Africa’s most eminent photographers. His work has been shown at the Guggenheim, New York and galleries in Barcelona, Paris and Amsterdam. Fosso started taking self-portraits using up exposures on his films – to send to his mother in Nigeria, who he had left behind as a refugee fleeing the Biafran war in the late 1960s. Although his initial aim was to show he was alive and well, his interest in exploring the genre grew steadily, and he experimented with new techniques and poses. His work was included in Africa Remix at the Hayward Gallery in 2005, the largest collection of contemporary African art ever seen in Europe and had a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2010.