The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, is presenting Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination, a major exhibition that examines how photographic portraiture became a powerful tool for political expression, self-definition, and Pan-African solidarity in the mid-20th century and beyond. On view from December 14, 2025, to July 25, 2026, the exhibition traces the ways photographers and their sitters actively shaped new visions of Africa during an era marked by decolonization movements across the continent and the rise of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.
Bringing together historical and contemporary works, the exhibition focuses on photographers working in Central and West African cities such as Bamako, Bobo-Dioulasso, and Kinshasa, where portrait studios and nightlife scenes became vibrant spaces for experimentation, self-fashioning, and political imagination. Photographs by Jean Depara, Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé, and Sanlé Sory capture everyday citizens, musicians, dancers, and youth culture at a moment when new national identities were being forged. These images reveal how clothing, posture, gesture, and setting were carefully chosen to project confidence, modernity, and collective aspiration in the face of rapidly changing political realities.
The exhibition also expands its scope beyond the African continent to highlight the role of photographers in the African diaspora. Works by James Barnor and Kwame Brathwaite, who lived and worked in Europe and North America, demonstrate how photography helped construct “Africa” as a global political idea. Through fashion photography, studio portraits, and images tied to the Black is Beautiful movement and Pan-African activism, their work underscores the transnational exchange of ideas that linked African independence movements with Black cultural and political struggles abroad.
Contemporary artists Samuel Fosso, Silvia Rosi, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby are featured alongside these historical figures, emphasizing the continued relevance of portraiture as a medium for interrogating identity, memory, and belonging. Their works reflect on inherited histories, diasporic narratives, and the ways photographic archives continue to shape how Africa is imagined today. By placing these contemporary practices in dialogue with mid-century studio photography, the exhibition highlights both continuity and transformation in visual strategies of self-representation.
Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination is organized by Oluremi C. Onabanjo, The Peter Schub Curator, with Chiara M. Mannarino, Curatorial Assistant, both from The Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography at MoMA. The exhibition is part of the museum’s broader efforts to expand and rethink the history of modern and contemporary photography through a global lens. Through its rich selection of works and critical framing, the exhibition positions the photographic portrait not merely as a record of appearance, but as a dynamic site where political dreams, cultural pride, and visions of collective futures are imagined and made visible.
