#Eliot_Elisofon’s Africa: Old, Updated, Worse
▻http://africasacountry.com/eliot-elisofons-africa-old-updated-worse
Eliot Elisofon did not cast “new light” or “refine Africa in a new and a complex way for American audiences,” as claimed in Susan Stamberg’s “‘Life’ Photographer Showed Africa Through a New Lens” on NPR (February 10, 2014) about an exhibit of Elisofon’s work at the Museum of African Art in Washington D.C. His subjectivity […]
#Eliot_Elisofon’s famous portraits of a young #Chinua_Achebe
▻http://africasacountry.com/eliot-elisofons-famous-portrait-of-chinua-achebe
When the great Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe died this April, one of the photographs used repeatedly to illustrate stories or obituaries was a portrait taken of him in 1959 by the American photographer Eliot Elisofon. It is useful to unpack the image, a conventional portrait of Achebe leaning on a desk with two copies of Things Fall Apart in front of him. A photograph, a snapshot, the filtering of the lost moment, is always more than the visual graphics and the intended ’message’ it (...)