Unseen Art Scene (mirror)

Christmas tea party at KW's residency in Katwe, the start of Youth Day, 1957 (spread from The Kaddu Wasswa Archive) The contested and, at times, controversial ‘discovery’ of the work of Malian photographer Seydou Keita in the 1990’s acutely highlighted some of the difficulties that can accompany the First World consumption of Third World imagery. The dislocation between his modest, functional and inexpensive contact prints, and the feted portraiture that graced the walls of New York’s Gagosian Gallery, could not help but obscure many of the works’ more telling conditions of production, and indeed their less exalted, more prosaic meanings. As one academic described  it, ‘During their journey around the world, Keita’s photographs have transformed their social, cultural and political meaning, according to the explicit and implicit intentions of some Western agents. Keita’s photographs have been transformed into market products and their symbolic value changed encountering new audience...