Photography and Orality
Dialogues in Bamako, Dakar and Elsewhere

SEEING PEOPLE AS CONNECTED TO THEIR ENVIRONMENT

Q How would you define the link between all your projects? For example, between your work on the subject of dance, which is primarily an exploration of formal and aesthetic concerns, and your projects dedicated to environmental and social issues.
EFD The common theme in all my projects is to portray people in their environment. For example, in my series on dance and the one on wrestling, the connecting link is a desire to capture movement. In some ways, I became a part of that movement; I was perhaps on the inside of the image itself. That produces a particular type of image, because the aim is to suspend an action in motion. But I have a different approach when I work on social subjects, which don’t involve motion but, rather, explore specific issues and therefore require more time to photograph. Photographing people in their own environment and using a frontal pose maintains a sense of distance and allows the viewer to take a step back from the scene. It also allows the photographer – meaning me! – to allow people to express their personalities through portraiture. I see my portraits as a social commentary rather than an aesthetic representation of someone. I can’t impose a pictorial aesthetic on the people I photograph. Some photographers may be able to do this, but I can’t. For this kind of portrait, I need to position people in their own environment and take into account the physical context in which they live their lives. That’s what sets my portraits with a social theme apart from those of dancers, for example.

A TENDANCY TO CONCEPTUALIZE

Q What inspires you to take a photograph? Is it the image itself or the social context?
EFD I tend to conceptualize things, to look at the world through my own analytical lens and then to search for images that correspond to my ideas. So, for example, for my series on dancers, I wanted to spend time with them and show the places and the "conditions" in which they worked. But when I actually met them, I discovered aspects that were purely aesthetic, as well as others that related specifically to the location and the rehearsal process. It could have ended up taking a more documentary-style approach, showing the daily experience of dancers from morning to dusk, eating their meals, and so on, but it didn’t turn out that way. I also wanted to explore dance as a subject in itself, so the aesthetic aspect was also important.

DOCUMENTARY SUBJECTS AND AESTHETIC CHOICES

EFD For my series, Living With Your Feet In Water, my idea was to explore an ongoing problem for people living in the outer suburbs of Dakar: rain. Since local infrastructures are inadequate, people in these neighbourhoods are often subjected to flooding. Every year, photographers document this social and environmental problem. It’s an important current concern that I also wanted to photograph, because it’s a terrible situation. But at the same time, I was more interested in the people than the problem itself. I wanted to portray people who deal with difficulties on a daily basis. I had to find the right aesthetic approach. I wanted to concentrate on the individuals involved in this struggle without necessarily encouraging them to feel sorry for themselves. So, I decided to use colour and to accentuate the contrasts between colours. That’s how it works: on one side, you try to illustrate a particular subject, and on the other, you must satisfy the aesthetic motivations that guide the construction of your subject matter.

FROM GLOBAL TO LOCAL: CLIMATE ISSUES

Q You did a series of photographs on the Global Days of Action dedicated to climate change. In these photographs, people hold white dots in their hands. What is the meaning of this?
EFD That was a commissioned job. I took part in an international day event focused on environmental problems. There were different groups participating in the event, and each one chose an object that could serve as a way to sound the alarm. I chose a while dot, with the idea of connecting together each of these white points across the planet. The subject of the environment appeals to me not only because of the immense scale of it; local issues also interest me. For example, flooding is an environmental problem. In the case of Senegal, people don’t necessarily have the objectivity required to take action on environmental problems, and we must constantly work on raising awareness of this. There are so many subjects here that tie in with environmental issues. The problem of plastic is an example. There are subjects that I wasn’t able to cover, such as the issue of droughts that I was interested in before I explored the flooding problems in Algiers. I went to an area where farmers can no longer farm their land, where many people have packed up and left. Many people emigrate to Europe because they can’t work their fields any more. That’s a subject that I wasn’t able to document in the end, but droughts are a serious problem as these days, there are sometimes only two months of the year in which it rains.
Q Whether you deal with the subject of flooding or droughts, you have said that your intention is to portray people who face difficult situations in their lives. How do people react when you tell them that you want to document their situation? Are they willing to show their problems, or even be seen in photographs?
EFD Senegalese people are very proud, and they generally don’t like to be shown in difficult or precarious situations. But my series Living With Your Feet In Water recounted a current issue that people are concerned about. People are well aware that it’s important to show what’s going on around us, because they feel powerless to change anything. They understand that this problem concerns the whole community, and that it can only be effectively handled by the authorities. Therefore, to accept being photographed in this particular context was also a way of alerting the local authorities to the problem. I simply photographed people in their daily activities and the local neighbourhood leader helped explain the situation to them, so they agreed to be involved. They were able to retain their dignity due to the way I photographed them facing the camera.

CITIZENS’ MOVEMENTS

Q Do you see it as your duty as a photographer to document periods of great social change?
EFD I’m not so sure that I see it as a duty. People tend to say that in Africa, we’re not masters of our own destiny, that civil society has no power to influence politicians, who don’t respect the law anyway. I explored the subject of alter-globalization because I wanted to understand the ways in which people could join together in collective action. The presidential elections in Senegal [in 2012] gave us an opportunity to find out whether or not citizens could influence the political system. These are issues that interest me, so I went out to explore them in a reportage. It was a little like my project on dance, because I allowed myself to be swept up in the movement in front of me, so here I let the events guide me. In March 2011, people started to organize demonstrations, which continued until the election period in March 2012, so it lasted for a year. My original idea was to follow grass-roots groups that modelled themselves on citizen activist movements. The first one I heard about was the "Y’en a marre" (Enough is Enough) movement, which had a serious agenda of civic engagement and advocated change in society. People’s mentalities must change if we want them to respect and take responsibility for the common good. For example, people had to go out and knock on doors to motivate residents to work together to clean up their neighbourhoods. This was genuine civic action. In the lead-up to the election, young people were also encouraged to register on electoral rolls. The actions organized by the "Y’en a marre" collective resonated the most with my idea of citizens’ movements. Later initiatives were more directly political in nature, such as those that led to the creation of the Movement of June 23, which was formed to protest against proposed political reform in Senegal. A massive demonstration erupted across the country at that time, with people gathering in front of the parliament in an effort to stop the incumbent president from proposing a law that would allow him to be re-elected with only 25% of the vote, and, at the same time, to create a presidential "package" that included the appointment of a vice-president elected at the same time as the president, requiring just 20% of the vote. This draft law triggered tremendous criticism and gave rise to this second movement called M23 (Movement of 23 June). For me, however, this movement didn’t entirely fit in with my conception of citizens’ activism. It was a reactive movement based on political struggle. My original plan was to give a face to citizens who were fighting the system, but as the project progressed, it turned into a chronicle of political demonstrations at the time. In addition to the monthly demonstrations that started on 23 June [2011] and continued until the presidential campaign, the "Y’en a marre" collective also organized other initiatives. From January 2012, the protests intensified, and it was at that point that it became necessary for me to follow the style of a photo-reportage.

Interview conducted in Dakar, Liberté 6, 18.06.2014
by Bärbel Küster, Marion Jäger, Marie-Louise Mayer, Alicia Hernandez-Westpfahl