"L'Afrique par elle-même"
("Africa by Africa")

Almost no landscapes,
almost no houses,
almost no objects.
But women, men, boys and girls, little children,
thousands of them, millions of them,
looking into the lens as they look at the world,
perhaps as an ideal of themselves.
They flirt with the camera or just wave,
but it's not themselves they're waving at, narcissistically,
it's because they belong to the world and to modern society,
to their family and to their culture.
All they're doing is offering what they think they can :
an image of the best of themselves.
Photography in Africa is less exotic than the way others see it.
But it has so much to offer us if we look beyond the settings that are extraordinary to us but not to them
And look at their eyes,
the way they hold their hands,
the way they stand:
simply women and men

Jean-Loup Pivin, Revue Noire

L'Afrique par elle-même is a global exploration of photography concerning non-Mediterranean Africa and the Indian Ocean. The aim is not to define or invent what might be termed 'African photography'. On the contrary, techniques and aesthetic tendencies from a wide range of places and times are represented as a great collage, avoiding presuppositions about any particular style or identity.

This exhibition and the accompanying publication together cover all contemporary research on the subject of African photography, mainly that carried out by La Revue Noire.,

Exhibition organized by Jean-Loup Pivin, Revue Noire

Assisted by
Pascal Martin Saint Léon
N'Gon Fall
Frédérique Chapuis
Simon Njami
Gwenaële Guigon

With the participation of
Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris
La Pinacoteca de Estado de Sao Paolo, Brazil
The South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
La Délégation aux arts plastiques, Ministère français de la Culture, Paris
Ministère des Affaires étrangères, service culturel et de coopération française, Paris
Le FAS Fonds d'Action Sociale, Paris

From early photographers to the first African photographic agencies in the 1960s
From studio photographs in Saint-Louis du Sénégal to the work of Seydou Keita in Mali

Contemporary Africa and its diaspora living as part of the world at large.
Photojournalism.
Photography with a political message.
The photographic essay.
Art photography.