A common cliché about photography pertains to its ability to “freeze time”. Drawing on the work of the four present photographers, this panel talk revisits this hackneyed phrase to explore photography’s complex relationship with time. If our collective present affects how we view our past and our future, how we (re)frame history is always contingent on the contemporary moment. How does the fraught present influence our view of the past/future? And how ‘timeless’ can an image really be?

DELALI AYIVI

Delali Ayivi is a Togolese and German photographer. She started out photographing her friends and family in Germany, Togo and Malawi. Finding her great grandfather´s work – Togolese photographer Alex A. Acolatse – inspired Delali to document other people with an added focus on fashion. In 2019, together with the artist Malaika Nabillah, Delali set up an ongoing project called “Togo Yeye”. The duo collaborates with innovative Togolese talent, especially young fashion designers. Together, they create work that seeks to document and empower their creative community at home and in the diaspora. Currently Malaika and Delali are based in Lomé where they continue to develop “Togo Yeye” and explore various themes related to the Togolese identity.

FABIOLA CEDILLO

Fabiola Cedillo is an Ecuadorean photographer and educator. Obsessed with following from the image the movements of adaptation and resistance of the human being in front of social roles, desire, frustration and idealization; part of her work focuses on the de-stigmatization of bodies that are marginalized for being non-normative.
In 2017, she created AULA / School of Photography in Latin America, currently focused on visual education for ethnic minorities, migrants, and trans and non-binary people. Together with Indanza, they create workshops to work on themes related to body and image with people with physical and mental problems.
She has published and exhibited her work in different countries in America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Her first self-publication “Los mundos de TITA” was the winner of several awards and took part in numerous photography festivals and art fairs. She was awarded the 212 Photography Istanbul 2020, was Aperture’s 2018 Portfolio Prize Runner Up and, in the same year, she received the Pampa Energía Fola FO4CM Prize. She was the 2017 winner of the “New Generation Prize ”, part of the PHM WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHERS GRANT and was awarded with the Portrait of Britain in the British Journal of Photography in 2016. She was nominated to Joop Swart Masterclass 2018 and 2019 by the World Press Photo and was a finalist for Gomma Grant 2018, Aesthetica Art Prize 2018, and PRIX LE BAL SFR Jeunes Talents 2013.

GABRIELE CECCONI

Born in 1985, Gabriele Cecconi is a documentary photographer interested in social, humanitarian and environmental issues and focusing, in particular, on the relation between human beings and the environment. He approached photography in 2014 following a law degree and, in 2015, was selected by Camera Torino and Leica for a masterclass with the Magnum’s photographer Alex Webb. His work has been published in Italian and international magazines and newspapers such as Internazionale, L’Espresso, The Caravan and GUP Magazine and it has been exhibited in several festivals, galleries and museums all around the world. Cecconi has received numerous awards and grants, including POY (Picture of the Year International), PX3 Photographer of the Year, the Grand Prix of the Andrei Stenin International Press Photo Contest, the Fotografia Etica Award, the LUMIX Festival Sustainability Award and the Yves Rocher Foundation Photography Award. In parallel, he conducts research on the relation between culture, power and representation and is interested in the spiritual and pedagogical aspects of visual arts.

KENNEDI CARTER

A Durham, North Carolina native by way of Dallas Texas, Kennedi Carter is a photographer with a primary focus on Black subjects. Her work highlights the aesthetics & sociopolitical aspects of Black life as well as the overlooked beauties of the Black experience: skin, texture, trauma, peace, love and community. Her work aims to reinvent notions of creativity and confidence in the realm of Blackness.

ERIC OTIENO SUMBA

Eric Otieno Sumba is a writer. He has contributed to the edited volume African Artists: From 1882 to Now (Phaidon 2021) as well as to publications including Contemporary And, Africa is a Country, Something We Africans Got, Sleek, Frieze, Nataal, Texte zur Kunst and GriotMag, where he is also contributing editor. He is also a social theorist and political economist currently completing his doctoral research at the Department of Development and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Kassel.

REFRAMING HISTORY: FREEZING TIME IN A CHARGE PRESENT

Thursday November 18th
4 pm – 5 pm CET
BASE Milano, Italy
Talk in English
Free Entrance