all photos by Ibrahima Thiam
Ibrahima Thiam (b. 1976, Saint-Louis) uses his camera to simultaneously archive and reimagine the rich history of his home country of Senegal. With projects ranging from repurposing “found” photos from colonial-era studio photographers, to street interventions, to staged encounters with local deities, Thiam's photography responds to the history of the medium and deploys it to safeguard spaces, beliefs, and icons that might otherwise be washed away. He is motivated by the lack of younger generations’ interest in their local histories—oral or artifact—and seeks new methods for inserting these traditions into the flows of contemporary art and storytelling. Notably, Thiam was included in the tenth edition of the Rencontres de Bamako, African Biennale of Photography in 2015, The View From Here: Contemporary Perspectives From Senegal (Dak'Art Biennale OFF in 2018, followed by three-venue United States tour in 2018-2019), and D'une rive à l'autre at Raw Material...