Photography and Orality
Dialogues in Bamako, Dakar and Elsewhere

ACTIVIST PHOTOGRAPHERS

Q When we spoke to Elise Fitte-Duval, we discussed the Movement of 23 June [2011] in Dakar, which inspired the involvement of many Senegalese photographers. Was that the case for you?
MD In my view, it was the right thing for art to bring people into the streets and demand a change in society. At that time, art played a role as a factor of change. People didn’t talk about it so much, but it was clear to see, because thanks to photography and photographers, people were able to go back over the events that had occurred. Rappers, through their voices, appealed to people to come out on the streets and demand the resignation of [President] Abdoulaye Wade.

EXHIBITING IN THE STREET TO CONVEY MESSAGES

Q Photographs have been regularly exhibited in the streets of Dakar and Bamako, and in Johannesburg in South Africa. What is your opinion about exhibiting photos in the street? What subjects would you choose to photograph if you were to do this kind of "street art"?
MD I’ve started a series of portraits of people that convey messages using body painting. It continues the idea of wall graffiti, but this time using the body as the medium. The messages are aimed at the general public. The idea behind it was to compose messages on different parts of the body that evoke issues such as knowledge or civic engagement, which are drawn on a person’s back or on their hand, for example. I took part in a short workshop with the Goethe-Institut on the theme of the urban DNA of Dakar, and did a series of portraits on this subject. I asked a graffiti artist to draw the messages, which I then photographed. I’ve taken quite a few photos on this theme, and I’m still pursuing the project. For a different project, I’m exploring the subject of what we call "lap skin" products, which are used to whiten the skin, and hair straightening products that can burn the scalp. The idea is to shoot macro images: rather than show people’s faces, I want to show the damaging effects of these cosmetics. I think it would be very interesting to exhibit this project in the street. Women here need to free themselves from their inferiority complex, which is not so much dictated by the West as by men who consider that white women are better than black women, or who say, "We like them light-skinned". Because of the strong influence of the male viewpoint, women try to whiten their skin and end up taking all sorts of risks. They use bleach and other products that are hard to even imagine. I know women who have experienced this personally: if they’d known the extent of the damage these cosmetics would cause, they would never have used them. Many women are unaware of the dangers, and we must make sure that the younger generation, in particular, gets the right information. A nine-year-old child who saw a photo like this would wonder what it was. This gives us an opportunity to say, "This is not a good thing, it’s something you mustn’t do. These products are banned, you must never use them."

BLACK AND WHITE, THE LANGUAGE OF EMOTIONS

Q You chose to work in black and white for your Lingeers series [2011-2013], as you have for many other series. Is the use of black and white fundamental to your idea of celebrating women?
MD No, it’s not. In fact, I’m not quite sure where the idea of using black and white came from. All I can say is that when I started out in photography, I discovered photographs taken by one of my uncles, who used to have a studio in Saint-Louis, which were stored in his collections at the studio. I knew that he had been a photographer, but I’d never taken an interest in his work. At that time, I became interested in his work in black and white, which appealed to me much more than his work in colour, because of his use of light and shade. Shadows reveal shapes and forms, while light reveals the image, because we know that without light, images would be completely black and there’d be no way of interpreting them. When it comes to exploring emotions, I find working in black and white far more interesting than colour. I’m not sure how to explain my reasons for this, but there’s something about it that really speaks to me. To me, black and white is timeless, since before colour photography arrived on the scene, everything was shot in black and white. I would like to step back into the past, to a time when people did their photographic enlargements without using Photoshop, just using the techniques of traditional film photography, which is the original source of all photography. That’s what inspired me to start working in black and white, and it was also a way for me to set myself apart from others, because there are quite a lot of photographers working here. I needed to develop my own personal style. That’s how it came about. I gradually found a method of presenting my prints in a way that reproduces the effect of film photography. That was my objective. If I were given the choice today, perhaps I would go back to doing traditional film photography, you never know!

Interview conducted in Dakar, Liberté 6, 20.06.2014
by Marion Jäger, Bärbel Küster, Alicia Hernandez Westpfahl