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Osei Bonsu, Donatien Grau, ...: Photography and Politics
Photography and Politics
(p. 45 – 78)

Osei Bonsu, Donatien Grau, Renzo Martens, Bruno Serralongue, Abdellah Taïa

Photography and Politics
Images through the World

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  • photography
  • conversation
  • contemporary art

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Osei Bonsu

is a British-Ghanaian curator, critic, and art historian based in London and Paris. His activities encompass exhibition programming, publishing, and cultural strategy in the field of visual arts. He has developed projects focused on transnational histories of art, collaborating with museums, galleries and private collections internationally. In 2017 he ­curated the 10th edition of Satellites, an exhibition co-commissioned by Jeu de Paume and CAPC: Centre for Contemporary Art, Bordeaux. He has also worked on the development of a number of projects focusing on African art, including Pangaea II: New Art from Africa and Latin America (­Saatchi Gallery, 2015) and 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair (2013–14). He holds a Masters in History of Art from University College London, where he earned a distinction for his dissertation on surrealism and African sculpture. Bonsu is a contributing editor at frieze magazine.
Other texts by Osei Bonsu for DIAPHANES
Donatien Grau

Donatien Grau

is a scholar and author. He currently serves as head of contemporary programs at the Louvre and as chair of the Association Pierre Guyotat.
Other texts by Donatien Grau for DIAPHANES

Renzo Martens

gained international recognition with the films Episode I, 2003, and Episode III: Enjoy Poverty, 2008, which was televised in more than 23 countries. In 2012 he established the Institute for Human Activities and its “reverse gentrification” program in DR Congo. Together with the plantation workers of Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise, he uses artistic critique to redress economic inequality—not symbolically, but in material terms. Consequently, in 2017, they opened a OMA-designed white cube on a former Unilever plantation.
Other texts by Renzo Martens for DIAPHANES

Bruno Serralongue

was born in 1968 in Châtellerault. He lives and works in Paris and Geneva, where he teaches at the Haute Ecole d’art et de design. After studying Arts at the Villa Arson in Nice and at the Ecole ­nationale de la photographie in Arles, and Art History at the university Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris, since the mid-90s Bruno Serralongue has been developing a committed photographic pratice focused on issues such as the medium's history, its use and its informative potential.
Other texts by Bruno Serralongue for DIAPHANES

Abdellah Taïa

was born in Rabat in 1973. He has published several French-language novels with Éditions du Seuil, translated into many languages in Europe and USA, including L’Armée du Salut (2006), Une mélancolie arabe (2008), Le Jour du Roi (Prix de Flore, 2010), Infidèles (2012), Un pays pour mourir (2015), Celui qui est digne d’être aimé (2017) and La vie lente (2019). In 2014, he directed his first film, L’Armée du Salut, based on his novel of the same title. Taïa is the first Arab writer to come out as gay.
Other texts by Abdellah Taïa for DIAPHANES
Donatien Grau (ed.), Christoph Wiesner (ed.): After the Crisis

After the Crisis offers a platform for discussions between some of today’s leading artists, writers, theorists, curators, and historians aimed at questioning the very status of photography today. Contributors come from the realms of critical theory, fiction,  performance art, fashion photography, and museums, as well as film and design, and their conversations bring together history and the contemporary. Comparing the current situation of photographic images with the crisis experienced by representation at the time of the birth of photography, they set our relationship with photographic images in the digital era in perspective. Through these discussions, we come to sense the existential burden of being surrounded by images, while also beginning to grasp the historical depth of a questioning of images that started long before the current generation and engages with crucial political and cultural issues of our time. 

 

With contributions by Philippe Artières, Osei Bonsu, Emma Bowkett, Elisabeth Bronfen, Emanuele Coccia, ­Russell ­Ferguson, ­Dominique de Font-­Réaulx, Marc Fumaroli, Leigh Ledare, Kieran Long, Roxana Marcoci, Renzo ­Martens, Paul ­McCarthy, Tom McCarthy, Pascale Montandon-­Jodorowsky, ­ORLAN, Alice Rawsthorn, Jeff Rosenheim, ­Elisa Schaar, ­Bruno Serralongue, Devika Singh, Abdellah Taïa, ­Oliviero ­Toscani, Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh ­Matadin, Wim Wenders, Richard Wentworth.

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