Sammy Baloji

Sammy Baloji’s artistic concern is rooted in the daily life of Congolege people, and he uses photography to explore his country’s present and to retell its history from the perspective of its people. “Ethnography, architecture, and urbanism [are] among my current focuses,” he has written. “My reading of the Congolese past is a way of analyzing African identity today, through all the political systems that the society has experienced.” He often combines archival photographs with his own shots of the people and places bearing the marks of colonialism. In his “Mémoire” series (2006), for example, he focuses on the former mining town of Lubumbashi. By superimposing photographs of the people who worked and ran the mines over his own images of these now disused structures, he reveals the ongoing ramifications of the past.