Casa África has inaugurated the exhibition 'Guardians of Memory', a project aiming to restore the visual narrative of Saint-Louis, a historic Senegalese city and the cradle of African photography, through the lens of its own local photographers. The exhibition, curated by Marta Moreiras, a documentary photographer and journalist, opens a window into nearly a century of history of this vibrant city located on the island of Ndar.
The exhibition project traces a chronological journey from 1940 to the present, gathering 111 photographs by 11 authors. These images, mostly unpublished, combine diverse styles, colors, and themes to recompose the history of Saint Louis, showcasing its various realities, identities, and social transformations from the perspective of its inhabitants. Each photographer represents a decade, and among them are Idrissa Sall and Frank Ciss, who traveled to Gran Canaria for the inauguration.
Marta Moreiras highlights that Saint-Louis is the cradle of photography in West Africa, being the first sub-Saharan city to receive photographic cameras and capture the first image on the continent. Founded in 1659, it was the first capital of the French colony and the French West Africa federation. The curator emphasizes that the exhibition offers the perspective of the Senegalese themselves, unlike official archives often taken by Europeans, thus rescuing history told by its protagonists.
The pioneering nature of the project involved extensive research and the recovery of scattered and forgotten archives. Moreiras describes the process as "long, difficult, but very exciting," working individually with each photographer to build a narrative that made sense to them. The main criterion was to select a representative aspect of each author to reconstruct the history of Saint Louis over a century. Portraiture emerges as the most practiced and defining genre of these African perspectives.
'Guardians of Memory' can be visited until next October 16th in the exhibition halls of Casa África, paying homage to the visual legacy of a city that reclaims its place in the history of African and world photography.
