Rafal Skrodzki
Photographic Portraits from West Africa
As you enter the gallery 916 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art you notice the room isn’t big yet it presents us with quite a variety of portraits from West Africa. The common theme behind all the photographs is that they’re portraits in black and white and mostly appear to have one person. The portraits differ from each other as some appear to look more professional than the rest. In most of the portraits you could find symmetry, balance and some strong contrast due to photos being black and white. Everything appeared to be eye-level as well with patterns showing on the floor, walls and dresses. The artists captures the presence of time in the photograph.
The primary focus of the exhibition are the people, very few of the photographs had anything significant in the background. The checkers floor certainly added to the photograph, creating nice pattern which appeared several times in some of the photos. One photo appeared to have frame within a frame as there were other photographs on the wall behind a person in one of the photographs. For most parts though the background was left out empty in order for the viewer to focus strictly on the person.
As I entered the gallery, the first photograph to my right stood out to me the most. It was a portrait of a man with clothes straight out of the 70s giving you the disco vibe. It drew my attention the most because it created this nostalgia I’ve had from the movies such as Boogie Nights. The sides had a close up of objects that created reflection while the the person was in a medium shot. Both the mirror on the sides and the checker floor gave a nice contrast to the photograph, It was also on the eye level.
The exhibit shows portraits of people from Western Africa. A lot of the photographs created this nostalgia for me and the emotions I felt was happiness and sadness. The reason for feeling happy and sad is because of the faces as some people appeared happy while others sad. Clothing wasn’t the only thing that filled me with so much nostalgia, it was the black and white as well as this blurriness.
I forgot to take a picture so I got this from the internet.
I love the photo you selected. It does scream the 1970s. Funny how a certain period style was international. I find it interesting that the lights along the sides are shown in the photo. One of the most interesting things in the show was some of the photos that were not tightly cropped and you could see what was behind the backdrop.