Date: Today Friday 25th March 2016 Time: 4 pm
CCA, Lagos has the immense pleasure to welcome to Lagos, the Ivorian Photographer Ananias Leki Dago who will talk about his work and the important archival project that he is doing with pioneering Ivorian elder photographer Paul Kodjo.
Ananias Leki Dago will be in Lagos from Thursday 24th to Sunday 27th March and looks forward to interacting with Nigerian photographers and artists.
The former ivorian president Felix Houphouet Boigny and Georges Pompidou, the french president. Photo: Paul Kodjo, Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, 1971
To take up Paul Kodjo’s work is to reconnect with the cultural and political history of Côte d’Ivoire, from the early post-independence period through the 1990s. Paul Kodjo began his photographic career in the early 1960s. He worked as a press photographer and was active in the art world, mostly cinema. In the 90s, the artist met with hardships that had a destructive impact not only on his life but on his negative archives.
In 2008, Paul Kodjo entrusted his entire collection of negatives — which, unfortunately, were damaged by humidity because they had not been well preserved – to the photographer Ananias Léki Dago. This emergency situation sparked a research project on Paul Kodjo’s photographic career and work, with a view to doing vitally necessary preservation and conservation in his archives.
Within the framework of this research, which he is leading with the support of the Goethe-Institut, Abidjan Ananias Leki Dago will give us a striking narrative of intergenerational exchange between two photographers. It will also be a rare opportunity to unfold, in greater detail, the larger and ongoing project focused on Paul Kodjo’s work as well as learn about Ananias Leki Dagos’s photographic practice.
About Ananias Léki Dago
Ananias Léki Dago was born the 2nd November 1970 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. After studying photography at the Fine Art School in Abidjan, travelling has become an essential source of his work. He immigrated in 2002 to Europe (Paris) and while he was there he started exploring Africa, by questioning its multicultural aspects in the urban context. Since 2006 he has focused on what he sees as being phenomenons through the African cities: in South Africa he went to explore Shebeens in the Townships: Shebeen Blues (2006-2009), in Bamako (Mali) he was interested in the wheelbarrows that shape the city: Bamako Crosses (2006-2012), in Nairobi (Kenya) he focused on the corrugated iron sheets that define much of the city: Mabati (2011).
Ananias moved back home in 2012, where he is working on a subject with regard to his own city Abidjan. He also organized the first photographic festival in Abidjan, “Les Rencontres du Sud”, successively held in 2000 and 2002. To the latter edition, he exhibited Paul Kodjo’s work.
This presentation is dedicated to the memory of Goethe Institute Abidjan director Ms Henrike Grohs who was taken away too soon in the attack by terrorists in Grand Bassam on the 13th of March 2016.
