Portrait Photography in West Africa 87 rural communities living in the interior of the country. He traveled from village to village, taking portraits with the only tools he could carry, his Rolleifl ex camera and a monochromatic backdrop. Rather than framing the image close to the sitter or modulating sharp tonal contrasts through backdrops like Keïta, Ka maintains a respectful distance from his patrons to include views of local architecture, open landscapes, and private interiors (fi gs. 13 and 14). Despite the contrast between Keïta’s dense compositions and Ka’s expansive portraits, their sitters face the camera with an equally arresting and self-assured presence. In and Out of the Studio: Photographic Portraits from West Africa August 31, 2015–January 17, 2016 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York www.metmuseum.org NOTES 1. Another photography exhibition, The Aftermath of Confl ict: Jo Ractliffe’s Photographs of Angola and South Africa, is on view from August 24–March 7, 2016. Featuring works by one of South Africa’s leading artists, it was organized to coincide with the exhibition Kongo: Power and Majesty that examines works created by artists in present-day Angola between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries (presented at the Metropolitan Museum September 17, 2015–January 3, 2016). The landscapes captured by Ractliffe consider a more recent chapter of Angola’s history. 2. Giulia Paoletti, “Un Nouveau Besoin: Photography and Portraiture in Senegal (1860–1960),” Thesis (Ph.D.), Columbia University, 2015. 3. Personal email correspondence with Erin Haney, June 2015. FIG. 13 (below): Oumar Ka (Senegalese, b. 1930), Self-Portrait at Home, 1959–1968. Negative. 17.8 x 17.8 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Visual Resource Archive, Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, 2015. During his career, Oumar Ka produced dozens of carefully composed selfportraits. As in most of his portraits, Ka does not only capture his likeness, but articulates his persona through inclusion of his surroundings. We can see the internal architecture of the thatch-roof house, the wardrobe, and dozens of portraits hanging behind him. Printed in multiple copies, Ka would give his self-portraits as gifts to his best customers. This was a conscious marketing strategy to please and reward his clientele. This portrait presents Ka as a professional photographer, conscious of his art, strategic about his business, and aware of his image. FIG. 14 (left): Oumar Ka (Senegalese, b. 1930), Man Standing in a Courtyard, 1959–1968. Negative. 17.8 x 17.8 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Visual Resource Archive, Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, 2015. The insertion of Ka’s monochromatic backdrop, tiny in comparison to the vast semi-desert landscape, locates the sitter and defi nes this image as a formal portrait. The man’s shirt, leather sandals, and loose-fi tting pants called thiaya, suggest that he was probably a mason who commissioned his portrait during a normal workday. Ka employs a wide angle to include the sandy streets of the Baol region, its overcast sky, and a large building complex. He plays with the different surfaces and their refl exivity to create patterns that modulate and enrich the composition. In the unequal ratio of space attributed to sitter and landscape, Ka’s fascination with his environment, or what he called the “décor,” comes to light.
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