at the downtown mcbains camera, i saw an indian photographer, take a passport snapshot of a man in tradtional nigerian dress while reading this about seydou keita, the malian photg that i mentioned below

like all photographic portraiture, Kietas imahes conjure a threefold reaiity comprising the sitters manner, the historical moment and the photographers vision. Over the past decade, critics have repeadetly observed in Kietas work an opposition between African and WEstern, old and new. It's time to move paast this either/or reading. Yes, his photographs are tesselated signs in which West African markers of status (scarification, jewelry, fabrics) interlock with markers of urban chic and buying power (a radio, a watch, handbag) But its the interlocking, not the oppostion, that is at stake/ Keit;as work captures the energy of the unique body=--the crook of thos ones elbow, the tilt of that ones chin--and in so doing secures the invidiual, seperate (Read modern) subject in a web of contextual (read tradtional) relations.

The connective mesh is literalized in surface patterning and in repetition of details. The same watch, the same lacy backdrop, the same foot on a chair pose appear in many of these shots. Partly this also realizes compostionally his understandign that such portratiure is niether innocent of commericalism (gangester movies, fashion magazines), not seperate from European high art (Matisse, the French Symbolist, nor detached from African kinship st ructures. Why, after all, should such things be disconnected? The fact golbal audiences and competing impersaios now figure in the equation shouldnt suprise us either. Keita's art is both intesenly local and totally adaptable to displacement. Thats modernity for you. Frances Richard, Art Forum 4/06

The typing of course, is all my mistakes--but i think that the late commerical devolpment of keita, and the populism of him in french and african american circles, suggests a similar kind of energy, matisse of course, spent much time in west africa, and african americans decided to go back there in various times historically (1890s, 1920s, 1960s)...but i also think about that proud man, getting his first canadian passport, at mcbains photo, and thinking, keita is maybe that, the equivlent of sears or mcbains, maybe a bit better, maybe given more lattitude, maybe less corperate and then i think, what happens if we decontectualise/aestheicise/repolitise, the photo taken for purposes of record as opposed to aesthetics...