Looted, but Not Lost: An African Artist’s Life Work
By JEROME DELAY
BANGUI, Central African Republic — Bangui has been a looters’ paradise for weeks now. Despite French and African Union peacekeepers, Christians have gone on a rampage burning Muslim homes and businesses in revenge for almost a year of Muslim Seleka rule of scorched earth and terror. Except now, with no rule of law, the looting has crossed religious boundaries and rampaging mobs sack their own neighborhoods.
On Monday midafternoon — peak looting time — on a side street near burned Muslim businesses, the dirt road was littered with 2¼ negatives, prints and opened boxes of photographic paper and chemicals. In front of a house with broken windows and doors, empty of furniture, a terrified woman explained that she was staying put to protect what was left from “a photographer’s house.”
Not that many photographers shoot 2¼ format. Even fewer Africans. I know of exactly one. He lives in Bangui.
Samuel Fosso.
I met Samuel last November at the LagosPhoto Festival, where he was showing for the first time his latest series, “The Emperor of Africa,” an allegory of the Chinese presence in Africa where he recreates famous portraits of Mao Zedong (below).
Mr. Fosso is an internationally renowned photographer, born in Cameroon and living in Bangui for years. He is best known from MoMA to the Pompidou Center for his incredible self-portraits as black icons: Martin Luther King (Slide 2), Malcolm X (Slide 12), Patrice Lumumba (Slide 8). His limited-edition prints fetch thousands of dollars in photographic art circles. He could have offered his latest series to the world’s best museums. But he wanted Africa to see it first.
On Monday, Mr. Fosso’s house was looted by a group of hooligans that 1,500 French soldiers could not keep at bay. Thirty years of work lay scattered in the dust. It reminded me of Serbian militias destroying birth reports from Muslim Kosovars in the early 2000s.
I started to pick up the negatives.
Living in Nigeria with his mother when the Biafra war erupted, Mr. Fosso fled the fighting as a child and found refuge in Bangui. He spent most of his life there in the Central African Republic’s capital. At 13, he opened his own photo studio. It was still running a few months ago. Despite the successive coups and violence, he remained in Bangui till late December 2013, for he is an “Afro-optimist,” says his agent, Jean-Marc Patras. Mr. Fosso has since been in Paris.
Ten minutes after I started to gather up his work, a French patrol drove by, demanding to know why a journalist was frantically putting things in a bag. Once I explained, the captain proposed that he “shoot and send the looters away.”
“It is not for me to tell you what to do,” I replied. Seeking the opportunity to counter the flow of bad press for their lack of action, the armored personnel carrier moved into the alley and fired warning shots.
As my helpers left, I entered the house along with some colleagues. Mr. Fosso’s office was littered with more boxes of negatives and prints. Limited-edition, museum-quality prints, some burned on the edges — they must have tried to set the house ablaze — some soiled with water and mud. As we walked out with the most valuable work, an anti-Balaka militiaman toting an AK-47 rushed by firing into the air. He accused us of “having called Sangaris” — the French forces — and ordered us to leave.
Shoving all the prints and negatives into my car, we sped away. I called Mr. Fosso in Paris. He was devastated. But at least some of his legacy has been preserved.
I returned the next day with friends from Human Rights Watch to salvage what was left. Hoping the looters hadn’t beaten me to it. This morning, the looters left us alone. They were busy dismantling the roof of his house.
Jean-Marc Patras, Samuel Fosso’s agent and dealer, said that although the week began with the horrific news of his friend’s loss, he was grateful. “Samuel is cool, calm and collected,” Mr. Patras said by phone from Paris on Wednesday morning. “It’s a bad story, but at the same time we can look at it as the glass half empty or half full. We are positive. His wife and kids are safe since last July in Nigeria. He has been in Paris for a month. If he had been in his house when they destroyed it, they would have killed him.”
At the same time, Mr. Patras said that given how so many others in the Central African Republic have lost everything — including their lives — he was keeping things in perspective.
“He has a career in front of him, as he is one of the most important contemporary artists in Africa,” Mr. Patras said. “His works of art are safe in New York. He is collected by the most important museums in the world, thank God. You keep going on. But it is not easy.”