Embodying Relation

"In EMBODYING RELATION Allison Moore reads the development of art photography in the 1990s in Mali through the work of Caribbean philosopher Edouard Glissant. Moore engages with Glissant's concept of relation in order to emphasize the ways in which Malian art photography is concerned primarily with making affective connections with viewers, rather than with contesting colonial histories, as has been the case elsewhere. Moore documents an art movement based in Bamako that has used photography as an expressive project, inviting expansive interpretations from viewers (rather than a documentary medium, as was more common during the era of studio photography). The robust photographic archive that accompanies her analysis demonstrates this transition from studio portraits to a portraiture aesthetic that engages the viewer in the simultaneous immediacy and opacity that Moore uses to introduce the reader to a Malian aesthetic. While Bamako has long been recognized as the center of African a rt photography, the city's capacity to support the growth of the movement is due in large part to the coordination of French patronage, most clearly exemplified by the funding of the Bamako Biennale sin