Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the social engagement of the Cinéma Numérique Ambulant (CNA - Moving Digital Projection) in Bamako, Mali, in comparison to studio portraiture of the 1940s-50s by photographers like Seydou Keïta.

Paper long abstract:

In Bamako, the capital of Mali, the 1994 inauguration of the pan-African Rencontres Africaines de la photographie, or Bamako Photography Biennale, sparked varied forms of local photographic production. One of the most exciting, in terms of incorporating the larger population of Bamako, is the Cinéma Numérique Ambulant (CNA - Moving Digital Projection). CNA, a European organization, recruits local Bamakois photographers to enter a neighborhood and take digital photographs of residents during the day. Those images are then projected that same night on the side of a neighborhood building for a local audience. While the Biennale is largely an exclusive affair, catering to international artists, curators, and arts professionals, the CNA, which operates during the opening week of the Biennale, engages with the local urban population. The impromptu slideshow articulates the neighborhood's own importance for itself, reflecting images of residents in their urban spaces back to themselves in an act that surprises, delights, and potentially empowers.

The communal sharing of image production and viewing activated by the CNA creates a form of social capital not unlike the creation and circulation of studio portraits by photographers like Seydou Keïta in the 1940s-50s - the very photographs that inspired the founding of the Biennale. This paper compares the CNA's contemporary project with that historical precedent in order to flesh out the possibilities for agency and empowerment within contemporary photography in Bamako.