Memphis, TN - Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography is the first major U.S. exhibition in a decade to examine current photographic works from Africa. Organized for the International Center of Photography (ICP) by Okwui Enwezor, one of the world’s foremost curators of contemporary art, the exhibition will present over 200 works by 35 artists from a dozen countries. Exhibition on view from March 1 through May 25, 2008.
 
Encompassing the African continent from the Muslim cultures of North Africa to the sub-Saharan nations of the south, Snap Judgments will feature a range of highly individual artistic responses to the enormous changes now taking place in economic, social, and cultural life throughout Africa.  
 
“Snap Judgments is remarkable in its fresh approach to Africa,” says site curator Stanton Thomas.  “Seeing this show will revolutionize how you perceive the entire continent. Ranging from compelling portraits, expansive landscapes, evocative scenes of daily life, and visionary, almost surreal creations, the images in Snap Judgments continually engage and beguile the viewer.”
 
Photography has come to play an expanded role within the spectrum of contemporary African art.  Artists have begun to use photography as means of artistic investigation, to analyze rather than just represent.  Reflecting the increasingly close relation of photography with other forms of experimental art in Africa, Snap Judgments will include not only photographic works but also multimedia installations and video documentation of performance art.
 
In addition to conveying the individual voices and views that inform African art today, Snap Judgments will examine the ways in which recent photographic art has moved beyond both African traditions and Western influences to explore new aesthetic territories.  The images serve as a major departure from the Western perception of Africa.  They go beyond the conventions that Africa is a place always in the midst of chaos, an attitude that curator Okwui Enwezor terms Afro-Pessimism.  Instead, the artists in Snap Judgments show us their countries through a completely different set of lenses.  They raise questions, propose new meanings, and offer an honest depiction of the continent's complexity.
 
EXHIBITION CURATOR OKWUI ENWEZOR
Okwui Enwezor has curated two exhibitions at the International Center of Photography as the adjunct curator: Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography in 2006 and Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art in 2008.  During the past ten years, the Nigerian-born Mr. Enwezor has worked as an independent curator on a number of significant international exhibitions, including In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present at the Guggenheim Museum, New York in 1996.  Mr. Enwezor won international praise in 2002 as the artistic director of Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany, one of the most prestigious recurring exhibitions of contemporary art.  In 2006, he served as artistic director of the second Biennial of Contemporary Art in Seville, Spain. Mr. Enwezor is currently Dean of Academic Affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute.
 
PUBLICATION
Snap Judgments is accompanied by a full-color catalogue published by ICP and Steidl Verlag. It includes a substantial critical essay by curator Okwui Enwezor, commentaries on the individual works in the exhibition, and biographical entries on the participating artists. Because many of the artists and works will be presented to an American audience for the first time, the catalogue can be expected to serve as an important reference for art historians and students of contemporary African culture and photography.
 
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