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Philosophical Quarterly, 50, no. 201 (2000).SAMUEL FOSSO
Nigerian/Cameroonian
The photographs of Samuel Fosso have often been
exhibited with the work of his West African com-
patriots Malick Sidibe ́and Seydou Keı ̈ta, but Fos-
so’s work is unparalleled in Africa. Although Fosso
worked as a commercial studio photographer like
Sidibe ́and Keı ̈ta, it is not his portraits of locals but
his intriguing self-portraits that have excited great
interest in Africa, Europe, and the United States.
His self-portraits have incited frequent comparisons
to the American photographer Cindy Sherman in
their presentation of different identities through
clothing and props that remain ambiguous in their
intentionality. Although this comparison may be
superficially apt, it must be noted that Fosso cre-
ated his portraits in the 1970s in relative isolation,
inspired by highlife music and American singer
James Brown, and without knowing that his por-
traits would eventually be exhibited. Fosso’s self-
portraits must also be contextualized within Central
African Republic’s (CAR) history and politics. The
ambiguous roles that Fosso’s identities perform
against the backdrop of political unrest in CAR
accomplish a socio-political critique of conven-
tional society’s restrictions, while subtly pointing
to the grotesque self-reinventions of CAR’s dicta-
tor, ‘‘Emperor’’ Jean-Bedel Bokassa.
Born in Cameroon to a Nigerian mother and
Cameroonian father, Samuel Fosso belongs to the
Ibo tribe. According to his own story, he was
paralyzed until age three, but was cured when a
healer rolled him off of the roof of a house. Fos-
so’s grandfather, who was also a healer and village
chief, had arranged for this curing of his grandson.
Fosso’s recent color photographic seriesle reˆve de
mon grand-pe`re(2003) refers to this event, showing
Fosso painted as a healer and dressed as a chief.
According to Fosso, ‘‘It’s a staging of the way of
life I experienced as a child, a way of life that has
since often haunted my dreams....I did it to pay
homage to my grandfather and to honour him’’
(Bonetti and Schlinkert 2004, 25). Fosso’s mother
died by the time he was five, near the time the
Biafran civil war broke out in Nigeria, endanger-
ing the lives of many Ibos. Fosso’s village fled to
the forest to escape the fighting and survived there
for several years. At age ten, Fosso went to live
with his uncle in Bangui, the capital of the Central
African Republic.
Two commercial photographers worked in Ban-
gui when Fosso arrived, one from Cameroon and
one from Nigeria. Disliking the long, hard hours
of work in his uncle’s shoe factory, Fosso asked
his uncle if he could apprentice with the Nigerian
photographer, and by the age of 13 he opened his
own studio, which went through a series of name
changes: Studio Photo Gentil, Studio Hoberau,
Studio Convenance, and Studio Photo Nationale.
Fosso’s black-and-white studio practice followed
the conventions of many West African commer-
cial photographers. He was in the business of
making people appear as their best and ideal
selves; in effect, making people look as beautiful
as possible. The slogan in his shop read, ‘‘With
Studio Photo Nationale you will be beautiful,FOSSO, SAMUEL