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Lot Essay
Born in Porto-Novo, Benin, Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou’s father was a photographer and he undertook an informal apprenticeship under his father’s tutelage. He and his father would travel together with a portable studio, using traditional coloured fabrics as the backgrounds to the portraits they made.
Agbodjelou’s work often occupies this limbo of people caught between tradition and modernity. In keeping with the nature of commercial photography, the work is a negotiation between photographer and sitter, where the sitter or patron seeks to use the photographic medium to confer or enhance status within society. Agbodjelou plays with this idea of the commercial photographer and the commissioned portrait, personal commercial considerations between sitter and photographer dissipate when the work is viewed in the gallery setting as an art object. What remains is the authenticity of the sitters and the vitality of the culture.
In Untitled, lot 139, we see a man in finely patterned robes and reflective sunglasses clutching a vase of oversized fake flowers. He smiles at the viewer in a self-aware fashion, collaborating equally with the photographer and ironically playing with established modes of self-presentation.
In Untitled, lot 140, a boy presents his large and healthy looking chicken. He gazes defiantly toward the lens, his foot self-assuredly raised upon the chair. The fabric in the background is unusual in that it is a pattern featuring elaborate plumbing and water taps.
Agbodjelou founded the first Photography School in Benin. He also serves as the President of the Photographers Association of Porto Novo. His work has been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Saatchi Gallery, London; the National Portrait Gallery, London and the Camden Arts Centre, London.
Agbodjelou’s work often occupies this limbo of people caught between tradition and modernity. In keeping with the nature of commercial photography, the work is a negotiation between photographer and sitter, where the sitter or patron seeks to use the photographic medium to confer or enhance status within society. Agbodjelou plays with this idea of the commercial photographer and the commissioned portrait, personal commercial considerations between sitter and photographer dissipate when the work is viewed in the gallery setting as an art object. What remains is the authenticity of the sitters and the vitality of the culture.
In Untitled, lot 139, we see a man in finely patterned robes and reflective sunglasses clutching a vase of oversized fake flowers. He smiles at the viewer in a self-aware fashion, collaborating equally with the photographer and ironically playing with established modes of self-presentation.
In Untitled, lot 140, a boy presents his large and healthy looking chicken. He gazes defiantly toward the lens, his foot self-assuredly raised upon the chair. The fabric in the background is unusual in that it is a pattern featuring elaborate plumbing and water taps.
Agbodjelou founded the first Photography School in Benin. He also serves as the President of the Photographers Association of Porto Novo. His work has been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Saatchi Gallery, London; the National Portrait Gallery, London and the Camden Arts Centre, London.