Rumblin’
By Dominique Malaquais Tell It To The World April 1st 1974.[1] Before a room packed with reporters, President Mobutu Sese Seko’s Press Secretary, Bula Mandungu, makes an announcement: on September 25th, the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship will take place in Zaire. In the heart of Kinshasa, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman will face off in […]
Variations on the Beautiful in the Congolese World of Sounds
By Achille Mbembe Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, Congolese rumba and its offshoots exercised an intimate power over the African imaginary. The sounds, rhythms and ethnic dances of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo-Brazzaville and a large area of Angola birthed the music of which we speak. Mixtures and borrowings from […]
The Trajectory of a Street Photographer
By Santu Mofokeng “… capturing and recounting the world of omens, premonitions, cures and superstitions that is authentically ours, … looking at reality without the limitations that rationalists … through the ages have tried to impose on it to make it easier for them to understand … [D]isproportion is part of our reality too. Our […]
Valladolid is not Spain, but it is
By Peter James Hudson They say that Valladolid was the only town in Spain where people wept openly when Francisco Franco died. That young women only fuck their boyfriends once a week. On Tuesdays. And then only for short stints after five in the evening. While I’m not sure if it happened on a Tuesday, […]
Gordon Parks Photo Essay
Katherine and Elridge Cleaver (Algiers, 1970) Ethel Sharriff (Chicago, 1963) Leader of the women’s corps of the Black Muslims/ Wife of the chief of the elite guard/ daughter of the Elijah Mohammed Duke Ellington Mrs. Jefferson (Fort Scott 1949) — All images by Gordon Parks AKA Shaft This […]