Roll over images for captions March 2002 Since the early 1980s interest in African photography has been steadily growing in Europe and especially in France for geographical, political and linguistic reasons. The cultural trend has been highly visible in several magazines devoted to African culture, such as the glamorous, large-format Revue Noire (also a book publisher) and in exhibitions at Paris’s Musée des Arts Africains et Océaniens, London's Barbican Gallery and other museums in Rome, Munich and Vienna. Then in the last seven years, interest in African photography has crossed the Atlantic Ocean. The most recent import is Flash Afrique, a small but ambitious book of essays in English and photographs which is the companion to a traveling exhibition that originated at Vienna's Kunsthalle. Some of the photographers featured in Flash Afrique have exhibited to much acclaim in Boston, Chicago, Washington and New York, as well as in Europe. Flash Afrique endeavors to investigate the representations of West African realities ranging from studio pictures to documentary photographs as well as more private imagery that draws on reflections and dreams. Because of its colonial past, West Africa has always been a territory of projections and misunderstandings. Conscious of this, the curators of Flash Afrique are faithful to their goal that the show and book not be a reconstruction from the curators’ point of view or a projection of Western desire, but tell one of many African stories through voices of artists and curators. The stories are of photographers who do studio work such as Seydou Keita from Mali and Philip Kwame Apagya from Ghana, and the documentary tradition from Dakar and Abidjan, where photo agencies have sprung up since 1989, because they can supply local news and reportage at a much lesser cost than their European colleagues. Photographers such as Bouna Medoune Seye from Senegal, who now resides in Paris ( "Les trottoirs de Dakar"/Dakar's sidewalks) and Morris Haron Kasco from the Ivory Coast ( "Les fous d'Abiddjan"/ mad people from Abidjan) belong to that fresh and direct tradition and bring into the saddest subject matter a very African sense of humor and play. Somewhere in between studio and documentary, the personal and lyrical work of Malik Sidibé from Mali and Boubacar Touré Mandémory from Senegal explore dreams and reflections and draw on a mix of African and modern traditions. All in all, Flash Afrique delivers what its title promises: a brief but exceptional illumination of West African photography. -- Carole Naggar (1) "African photographers," Guggenheim Museum, New York,1996, Africa by Africa at the Barbican Gallery ,London, 1999. Flash Afrique, Photography From West Africa.edited by Gerald Matt, Thomas Miesgang, Kunsthalle Wien and published by Steidl, Gëttingen, Germany,2001. The most important publication to date on African photography is Pascal Martin Saint-Léon's Anthologie de la photographie africaine et de l'Océan Indien (Anthology of Photography from Africa and the Indian Ocean) Paris, Revue Noire ed.,1998. With short English translations and over a hundred illustrations.