Gallery, London, Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris,
Mori Art Museum, TokyoSelected Works
Untitled self-portraits, 1975–1977
La vie c’est la liberte ́, Self Portrait(Life is liberty), 1977
La femme libere ́e ame ́ricaine dans les anne ́es 70s(The liber-
ated American woman in the 1970s), 1997
The Lifeguard, 1997
Le Chef(The Chief), 1997
Me ́moire d’un ami(Memory of a Friend), 2000
Le reˆvede mon Grand Pe`re(My Grandfather’s Dream),
2003
Further Reading
Bell, Clare, Okwui Enwezor, Danielle Tilkin, Octavio Zaya
and Olu Oguibe.In/sight: African Photographers, 1940 to
the Present. New York: Guggenheim Museum,1996.
Bonetti, Maria Francesca, and Guido Schlinkert.Samuel
Fosso. Milan: 5 Continents Editions srl, 2004.
Cotter, Holland. ‘‘When the I Is the Subject, and It’s
Always Changing.’’The New York Times. (September
12, 2003).
Deitcher, David. ‘‘Samuel Fosso.’’Time Out New York.
(October 2–9, 2003).
Fall, N’gone ́and Pascal Martin Saint Le ́on, eds.Anthology
of African and Indian Ocean Photography. Paris, France:
E ́ditions Revue Noire, 1998: 166–7.
Kelsey, John. ‘‘Samuel Fosso.’’Artforum v. 42, no. 4
(December 2003):147.
Noorderlicht Photo Festival.Africa Inside. Groningen, The
Netherlands: Aurora Borealis, 2000.
Vine, Richard. ‘‘Report from Madrid: Our Photos, Our
Selves.’’Art in Americav. 92, no. 1 (January 2004): 30–
1, 33, 35.
Xpo September. Samuel Fosso. Seydou Keita. Malick
Sidibe. Portraits of Pride. Stockholm Fotofestival in
collaboration with Rencontres de la photographie afri-
caine, 2002.PHOTOGRAPHY IN FRANCE
France was a major locus of photographic activity
until the mid-twentieth century. For the better part
of the second half of the century, it was, however,
characterized by a relative lag in institutional pre-
sence, which kept photography in its status as a
minor art. The situation changed in the years
1980–2000 with a popular, scholarly, and artistic
establishment of the medium. Yet, significantly, at
the end of the century there no scholarly history of
French photography available (Nori 1988 is an illu-
strated popular outline), and the only two French
general histories of photography (Rouille ́ &
Lemagny and Frizot) were written essentially from
the perspective of American photography.
If French Pictorialism was indistinguishable
from others, the early century should be remember-
ed for the invention of the Autochrome, the photo-
graphs of Euge`ne Atget, and the images of Jacques
Henri Lartigue.
The Autochrome, appearing in 1907, was the
result of a long train of research to produce direct
color images. As the first stable commercial color
emulsion, it was adopted by artists (such as Alfred
Stieglitz) and reporters (such as the operators
commissioned by financier Albert Khan). Al-
though it remained mostly confined to France, it
raised ‘‘crucial questions about the relationship
between photography and painting.’’ But it
excluded at the same time ‘‘the possibility of
manipulation of the final image’’ (Frizot in Frizot
423), thus pushing the medium further away from
pictorialism and into a more autonomous form.
Euge`ne Atget (1857–1927) can be seen as a link
between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
(Nesbit in Frizot 399). Beyond the documentary
value of his pictures of Paris, he illustrates the ‘‘dis-
covery’’ that later spectators, and especially other
photographers and artists, can make of images, a
symbol of the permanent recycling of photography.
‘‘Invented,’’ as it were, by Berenice Abbott in the
late twenties, Atget was also reinvented by much
more contemporary photographers and critics as a
‘‘precursor of modernism’’ and a ‘‘mystery’’ in the
history of photography.FOSSO, SAMUEL