Omar Victor Diop: "In my photos, I want to reveal a modern, optimistic, inventive Africa"<

“I think we need to renew the old-fashioned and somewhat folkloric image of savannah and forest Africa,” says Omar Victor Diop. Through his portraits and series, the formidable Senegalese photographer does more than tell stories, he tells history and shares his vision of Africa. His works, like his marvelous Studio des vanités series whose colors are as powerful as the emotions that radiate there, are exhibited in Bamako or Los Angeles or Paris. It is there, from November 11 at Paris Photo, that a new series, Allegria, will be presented at the time when a monograph dedicated to it is being released by Editions des 5 continents.

"I want to unveil a modern Africa"

Diop likes to travel the continents and still lives in Dakar where he was born in 1980. He is not the heir to a tradition of griots, as stereotypes would have it - "I am the last of a family of jurists and financial. My parents belonged to the middle class” – and he came to photography after having been an executive in a multinational. Since his work was discovered at the African Photography Encounters in Bamako (Mali) in 2011, Omar Victor Diop has questioned the standards of identity, beauty and elegance, and portrayed an African generation. creative and ambitious. He is inspired by great African photographers as well as artists he admires, such as Jean-Paul Goude. “I want to unveil a modern, optimistic, inventive Africa concerned with the challenges of our time,” he says. "We must return to this race for exoticism to show the multiple faces and aspirations of Africa, urban and complex."

"Diaspora", an allegorical series of former freed slaves

In his Diaspora series, presented in 2014, Omar Victor Diop highlighted the links between Africa and the rest of the world. His photographs focused on the representation of Africans in the history of Western and Asian art from the 15th to the 19th century, through allegorical portraits of former freed slaves: "I wanted to show the story of talented African men who who have crossed their borders, sometimes against their will, and who have inspired the world with their intelligence, their deeds and their dignity. Let us think of Jean-Baptiste Belley (unrecognized figure of the French revolution and first black deputy in the history of France, editor's note), Angelo Soliman (servant, mathematician, philosopher as well as confidant of the Emperor of Austria Joseph II, of Mozart and Haydn, NDLR), Frederick Douglass (writer, father of the Black Protest Movement, black liberation movement in the United States, NDLR) or Don Miguel de Castro, emissary from the Congo...»

Clichés composed like paintings

Diop himself embodies these characters in his photos, which he does not qualify as self-portraits. His artistic process is more subtle: convinced that an identity is always related to temporality, what interests him is to place his identity in different temporal spaces. Drawing inspiration from old portraits, Diop creates two dimensions in his photos: a background where he brings historical figures to life through elements recalling their era, context and clothing, almost like in a painting. And a foreground with ultra-contemporary symbols – like a soccer ball.

"Studio des vanités", a tribute to the art of African portraiture

A star prized by collectors, Diop offers an unprecedented image of the revolts of black people, the diaspora and the struggles for freedom and human rights. Its diverted aesthetic mixes past and present. His powerful and decorative photos, conceived as visionary artistic collages, juxtapose eras and allow us to weave invisible connections between key moments in history: the Selma march for civil rights in the American South (1965) , the lesser-known resistance movements against colonial oppression in southeastern Nigeria (such as the 1929 "Women's War") and the more recent protest movement the "Million Hoodie March" (march of millions of sweatshirts in hoods, in French), in New York, triggered by the murder of Trayvon Martin (2012), which inspired the Black Lives Matter campaigns. “My images were, at the start, means of perfecting my practice of photography, but also tributes to the art of African portraiture, in particular with my Studio des vanités series (2013), says the photographer. Little by little, what I wanted to do was to achieve what I aspired to: tell a story, through series that would be chapters.

Represented by the Parisian gallery Magnin-A, and its founder, André Magnin, Omar Diop will therefore unveil a new series entitled Allegoria on the occasion of the Paris Photo fair (1): "It's a series on ecological issues and responsibility of man before nature. Through these images, I tell about continuity and rupture, humanist and revolutionary ideals, as well as our vanities. I am talking about the responsibilities, talents and ambitions of an African youth. In short, through colors and presences, my photography celebrates time and a part of human history that we don't talk about. But which I hope speaks to the viewers.”

African and cosmopolitan influences

If he experienced influences from Senegal and all of Africa, through famous portrait painters like Mama Casset – "who had photographed my grandfather", he says - or Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé, Omar Victor Diop also received cosmopolitan influences beyond African borders, such as Annie Leibowitz and pop culture artists. "What matters, in the end, is that all our influences are worked on and singled out, to respond to human issues," explains Diop. "Whether it's the quest for freedom and recognition, which I proposed in my Liberty series (2016), or ecological issues that Africa, but also all of humanity must take up, I work in desiring as much as possible that my work resonates with what is respectful and tolerant, human in all of us.»

Right in the news, the work of Omar Victor Diop will be at the heart, from September, of an individual exhibition in Dakar (1), Saraba (meaning paradise lost) and will present for the first time at the Senegal the Diaspora and Liberty series in their entirety. The photographer also publishes his first monograph, Omar Victor Diop in which he presents the Diaspora, Liberty and Allegoria series in their entirety as well as an interview with Omar Victor Diop. A Deluxe box set in a limited edition of 100 copies will go on sale during the Paris Photo fair.

(1) Individual exhibition organized by Galerie MAGNIN-A at the Paris Photo fair unveiling its latest Allegoria series, from November 11 to 14, 2021

(2) Solo exhibition at Galerie Le Manège, Dakar, Senegal, from September 30 to November 14, 2021.

(3) Omar Victor Diop, in bookstores from November 5, 2021. Co-published by Galerie A-Magnin and 5 Continents publishing house.

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