Report on 2011 International Year Part 7: Photography of the African Continuum

With revolutions in the Middle East and the United States’ current Occupy Wall Street movement dominating media reports throughout 2011, the International Year for People of African Descent as declared by the United Nations has received little attention but that didn’t stop the traveling photo exhibition “WoMen in Africa - No Color One Color," from launching November 2 at the Italian Institute of Culture in Nairobi, Kenya.

The show marked the second major exhibition within two weeks to launch in honor of the International Year for People of African Descent. A multimedia display of works by different artists and photographers, “The African Continuum: Celebrating Diversity, Recognizing Contributions of People of African Descent”, opened at the U.N. Headquarters in New York City on October 19. For that occasion, Time Magazine photographer Chester Higgins Jr. addressed attendees on behalf of the participating artists.

In addition, the venerable Maya Angelou recorded her poem, “A Brave and Startling Truth,” for the occasion. The following is an excerpt:

“When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear…”
–– Maya Angelou

Cultural Diversity and Biodiversity

“WoMen in Africa - No Color One Color" (the capital “M” in WoMen is correct) features the work of Ludovico Maria Gilberti, an Italian photographer who has adopted Kenya as his second home. Gilberti’s approach to his subject is particularly interesting in light of the current social, financial, and political upheavals rocking various continents.

The massacre committed by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway this past July grew out of the gunman’s admitted fear that his country’s culture, as he knew it, had changed too drastically due to an influx of non-European immigrants. By contrast, “WoMen in Africa - No Color One Color," celebrates the positive aspects of human global interaction. In addition to acknowledging Kenya as an early starting point of human migration to Europe and other lands, the show also pays tribute to the country’s long-standing relationship with Italy.

Stefano Stefani of the Italian Parliament notes in the exhibition catalogue that, “As a means of exchange, innovation and creativity, cultural diversityis as necessary to humanity as biodiversity is to nature.”

Gilberti’s brilliant yet brooding color images often portray individuals silhouetted against shorelines, landscapes, and intriguing cloud formations. Travelers appear to grow out of the earth like the surrounding trees, and fisherman seem as one with the ocean as the fish they pull from its waves. This poetic visual interpretation of Africa stands in sharp contrast to the images of Somali refugees and starving Ethiopians that demand some humane form of response from the international community. Yet neither do they minimize or refute those painful realities–– Gilberti instead simply reminds viewers that the accumulated histories, experiences, and people that comprise Africa are as vast as they are ancient.

Although viewers do not see in these images the kind of definitive portraiture that has brought renown to African-American photographer Chester Higgins Jr., the images nevertheless evoke the same quality of soulfulness as Higgins’. In his examination of Gilberti’s photography, Mauro Guibellini discovered this:

“…A message in support of racial integration, exchange of cultures and experiences, peaceful coexistence in respect of not only identities but also diversities, diversities that can find common grounds, as minor as joy, as deep as pain, but which history and destiny have for centuries decided want and need to be found, if only for a moment.”

NEXT: Report on 2011 International Year part 8 History, Identity and Uniqueness

by Aberjhani, National African American Art Examiner
co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
and co-author of ELEMENTAL the Power of Illuminated Love

Explore the International World and Legacies of Afro-Descendants