Africa State of Mind
Ekow Eshun
Thames & Hudson
English
Hardcover
272 pages
280 x 220 mm
2018
ISBN 9780500545164
Africa State of Mind gathers together the work of an emergent generation of photographers from across Africa, including both the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. It is both a summation of new photographic practice from the last decade and an exploration of how contemporary photographers from the continent are exploring ideas of ‘Africanness’ to reveal Africa to be a psychological space as much as a physical territory – a state of mind as much as a geographical place.
Dispensing with the western colonial view of Africa in purely geographic or topographic terms, Ekow Eshun presents Africa State of Mind in four thematic parts: Hybrid Cities; Inner Landscapes; Zones of Freedom; and Myth and Memory. Each theme, introduced by a text by Eshun, presents selections of work by a new wave of African photographers who are looking both outward and inward: capturing life among the sprawling cities and multitudinous conurbations of the continent, turning the legacy of the continent’s history into the source of resonant new myths and dreamscapes and exploring questions of gender, sexuality and identity. Each of the photographers seeks to capture the experience of what it means, and how it feels, to live in Africa today.
(source: https://www.thelibraryproject.ie/products/africa-state-of-mind-contemporary-photography-reimagines-a-continent-ekow-eshun?_pos=2&_sid=3ebfd5829&_ss=r)
About the Author
Ekow Eshun is a British writer, journalist, broadcaster, and curator. He is the editor-in-chief of the quarterly magazine Tank, a former editor of Arena magazine, and the former director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts.
(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekow_Eshun)
About the Publisher
Thames & Hudson was founded in 1949 by Walter and Eva Neurath. Their passion and mission was to create a ‘museum without walls’ and to make accessible to a large reading public the world of art and the research of top scholars. To reflect its international outlook the name for the company linked the rivers flowing through London and New York, represented in its logo by two dolphins symbolizing friendship and intelligence, one facing east, one west, suggesting a connection between the Old World and the New. Today, still an independent, family-owned company, Thames & Hudson is one of the world’s leading publishers of illustrated books with over 2,000 titles in print. They publish high-quality books across all areas of visual creativity: the arts (fine, applied, decorative, performing), architecture, design, photography, fashion, film and music, and also archaeology, history and popular culture.
thamesandhudson.com
(source: https://thamesandhudson.com/page/about-us)