Looking for Surprises in Senegal
October 29, 2017 2:28 AM Subscribe
On his first visit to Senegal, Jake Michaels was inspired by the “curated” looks of many of his subjects. As he took portraits on streets, in cafes and at beachside nightclubs, he sought to make the people shine, while also spotlighting the action in the background. (SLNYT, Really terrific pics with understated flair and nice explanations alongside)
Paywalled out. My Senegal parrot is very disappointed.
posted by kinnakeet at 6:00 AM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by kinnakeet at 6:00 AM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
Correction: October 22, 2017
A picture caption with an article last Sunday about style in Dakar, Senegal, misidentified the animal pictured. It is a sheep, not a goat.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:17 AM on October 29, 2017 [8 favorites]
A picture caption with an article last Sunday about style in Dakar, Senegal, misidentified the animal pictured. It is a sheep, not a goat.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:17 AM on October 29, 2017 [8 favorites]
A picture caption with an article last Sunday about style in Dakar, Senegal, misidentified the animal pictured. It is a sheep, not a goat.
That is such a NY Times mistake to make.
The photos are great and made me want to find a way to go back to West Africa some day.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:27 AM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
That is such a NY Times mistake to make.
The photos are great and made me want to find a way to go back to West Africa some day.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:27 AM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
Reminds me of Viviane Sassen's work. Great stuff! Very relaxed style that's totally confident.
posted by xammerboy at 8:33 AM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by xammerboy at 8:33 AM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
So beautiful! This is exactly the kind of street photography I'm into and was looking for in this Ask MetaFilter question last year.
I guess it's important to know and consider that there's a dark underside to some of this. I got curious and Googled, and alas, violence against women and harassment are big problems in Senegal (as they are, sigh, in much of the world, really). That just makes me wonder if the captions and photo choices might have been at all different if they'd been more conscious of that; a woman wrote this and the photographer traveled with 2 other women, but it still feels like it's from his perspective. I wonder how the women he traveled with experienced the trip. It made me think about the distance between the tourist experience and the experience of people who live in any given place—how would you know what you don't know when you're somewhere like that?
Anyway! I love the joyfulness of the essay and the people, and that's actually why I Googled it, because everyone sounded so nice, and I wondered how true that was to the everyday lived experience. The idea of going to a nonjudgmental nightclub with women like the screenwriter pictured sounds lovely. I just wish it really were that lovely for everyone there.
posted by limeonaire at 9:00 AM on October 29, 2017
I guess it's important to know and consider that there's a dark underside to some of this. I got curious and Googled, and alas, violence against women and harassment are big problems in Senegal (as they are, sigh, in much of the world, really). That just makes me wonder if the captions and photo choices might have been at all different if they'd been more conscious of that; a woman wrote this and the photographer traveled with 2 other women, but it still feels like it's from his perspective. I wonder how the women he traveled with experienced the trip. It made me think about the distance between the tourist experience and the experience of people who live in any given place—how would you know what you don't know when you're somewhere like that?
Anyway! I love the joyfulness of the essay and the people, and that's actually why I Googled it, because everyone sounded so nice, and I wondered how true that was to the everyday lived experience. The idea of going to a nonjudgmental nightclub with women like the screenwriter pictured sounds lovely. I just wish it really were that lovely for everyone there.
posted by limeonaire at 9:00 AM on October 29, 2017
One of my favorite things in Paris is travelling around near the Chateau Rouge metro stop, the Little Africa part of Paris, and seeing all these women dressed in beautiful elaborate dresses. Subsaharan African women, speaking French, very fast and very dignified. And such beautiful colors in their dresses. I'm hard pressed to find good photos: this photo from this blog post is what I have in mind. I mean women in Paris everywhere are dressed up (by my American standard), these women are just dressed up in something distinctly non-European. They're beautiful.
posted by Nelson at 9:12 AM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Nelson at 9:12 AM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
With respect, limeonaire, I think that's sort of a reductive way to look at this set of photos? As you note, violence against women is rampant in lots of parts of the world, but we don't expect people doing street photography in New York to couch pictures they take with statements about absurdly high rates of domestic violence in the US. There are certainly reasons to look at street photography through a critical lens, and reasons to look at street photography by Westerners taking pictures of beautiful Others in beautiful clothes highlighting the "skeleton of colonization" through a critical lens, but I don't think that someone taking pictures in Senegal has a particular burden to talk about violence against women in his otherwise unrelated photo essay.
(Also, you might be interested in these pictures from Abidjan and the a EverydayAfrica instagram account)
posted by ChuraChura at 9:16 AM on October 29, 2017 [20 favorites]
(Also, you might be interested in these pictures from Abidjan and the a EverydayAfrica instagram account)
posted by ChuraChura at 9:16 AM on October 29, 2017 [20 favorites]
Oh, also interesting: I had known that St.-Louis, Senegal, and St. Louis, Missouri, were sister cities. I didn't realize the parallels between the two river cities extended so far; this account from Senegal, from the press releases page, sounds like it could've been written in Missouri:
Dakar remains jittery, with the youth and the riot police locked in running streets battles, using teargas, rubber bullets and water cannon spray to chase away angry opposition demonstrators - including rappers from the Y'en A Marre Movement. Their name means We're Fed Up, Enough is Enough.
Rappers have also been leaders in the protests in St. Louis, which Columbia Journalism Review dubbed "the most difficult place in American to practice journalism" this month. So as they say, life is hard all over. Fashion is a wonderful escape, as long as it's considered in context. I love seeing what people are wearing in other places.
posted by limeonaire at 9:17 AM on October 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
Dakar remains jittery, with the youth and the riot police locked in running streets battles, using teargas, rubber bullets and water cannon spray to chase away angry opposition demonstrators - including rappers from the Y'en A Marre Movement. Their name means We're Fed Up, Enough is Enough.
Rappers have also been leaders in the protests in St. Louis, which Columbia Journalism Review dubbed "the most difficult place in American to practice journalism" this month. So as they say, life is hard all over. Fashion is a wonderful escape, as long as it's considered in context. I love seeing what people are wearing in other places.
posted by limeonaire at 9:17 AM on October 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
In short: I totally get what you're saying, ChuraChura. I'm not sure what the place for that commentary would be in this particular photo essay, just as it would be absurd to mention what I just noted in a photo essay about fashion in St. Louis, Missouri. We posted at just about the same time, but that's part of what I was trying to get at there. Yeah, I'd want to just read about the fashion, probably, and I can imagine how some writer's attempt to "put that in context" of, say, the political climate here could possibly be done really awkwardly.
But like I said, I do wonder if some of the characterizations might have differed at all, were they from a woman's perspective. Maybe they wouldn't have, because tourists everywhere can be somewhat apart from day-to-day realities. But what knowing the context made me wonder was stuff about the descriptions in the essay that went past the fashion, like did the nightclub feel that safe and nonjudgmental? Or did it just feel that way to a male photographer from Los Angeles?
So that's when I started Googling, and to me, that's what made me curious about the context.
posted by limeonaire at 9:27 AM on October 29, 2017
But like I said, I do wonder if some of the characterizations might have differed at all, were they from a woman's perspective. Maybe they wouldn't have, because tourists everywhere can be somewhat apart from day-to-day realities. But what knowing the context made me wonder was stuff about the descriptions in the essay that went past the fashion, like did the nightclub feel that safe and nonjudgmental? Or did it just feel that way to a male photographer from Los Angeles?
So that's when I started Googling, and to me, that's what made me curious about the context.
posted by limeonaire at 9:27 AM on October 29, 2017
Dip Flash: The photos are great and made me want to find a way to go back to West Africa some day.
Hell to the yes. These cities can be such wonderful places to be.
posted by Too-Ticky at 9:29 AM on October 29, 2017
Hell to the yes. These cities can be such wonderful places to be.
posted by Too-Ticky at 9:29 AM on October 29, 2017
And you can tell a sheep from a goat in Africa because the sheep have long tails.
posted by Too-Ticky at 9:37 AM on October 29, 2017
posted by Too-Ticky at 9:37 AM on October 29, 2017
The pink, gold and green in that first picture are just gorgeous! And in the others, I love the juxtaposition of traditional clothes with sneakers and soda cups.
It reminded me of the street photography that streetetiquette used to do, which I miss so much.
posted by maggiemaggie at 9:41 AM on October 29, 2017
It reminded me of the street photography that streetetiquette used to do, which I miss so much.
posted by maggiemaggie at 9:41 AM on October 29, 2017
“I wanted to see what a typical Senegalese photo shoot was like,” Mr. Michaels said. “It was interesting to see them going through the same process as the people I know who work with fashion labels.”If that is a "surprise", I don't want to know what he expected by shooting Senegalese people.
posted by marycatherine at 11:47 AM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
He didn't say he was surprised. He said it was interesting to watch people working with completely different clothing and (presumably) cultural norms around women go through the standard steps of a fashion shoot. Which are of course the same everywhere- make the model look chic and sell stuff. I'd imagine that is interesting to see the different emphasis on desirability and wearability, the different lighting, the kinds of models used, the hair and makeup and accessories etc.
posted by fshgrl at 12:54 PM on October 29, 2017
posted by fshgrl at 12:54 PM on October 29, 2017
Regarding Senegal's problem with violence against women, I think it's important to remember that firstly misogyny is pretty much everywhere in the world, but secondly that even in countries with tension etc, people live and go on living.
I actually really enjoyed the captions, there was a kind of understated, functional aspect to them much like the photos themselves. They also made clear that in all but one case the photographer 1) interacted with the subjects, and 2)asked for permission. This is something sadly absent in too much street photography.
I enjoy images from developing countries - especially african ones - that don't either depopulate the frame to present a wholly pre-edenic wilderness, hit the viewer with clichéd poverty porn, or drown us in exoticism. I feel like these pictures are different (for the right reasons), but relatable.
posted by smoke at 1:22 PM on October 29, 2017 [8 favorites]
I actually really enjoyed the captions, there was a kind of understated, functional aspect to them much like the photos themselves. They also made clear that in all but one case the photographer 1) interacted with the subjects, and 2)asked for permission. This is something sadly absent in too much street photography.
I enjoy images from developing countries - especially african ones - that don't either depopulate the frame to present a wholly pre-edenic wilderness, hit the viewer with clichéd poverty porn, or drown us in exoticism. I feel like these pictures are different (for the right reasons), but relatable.
posted by smoke at 1:22 PM on October 29, 2017 [8 favorites]
Too-ticky, when I was in Namibia, I saw several long tailed goats, so that's no guarantee!
posted by smoke at 1:23 PM on October 29, 2017
posted by smoke at 1:23 PM on October 29, 2017
Goats always look like they're made mostly of elbows and menace. Sheep occasionally have nice eyes.
posted by ChuraChura at 1:27 PM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by ChuraChura at 1:27 PM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
For what it's worth, every single night club I went to during six months in Dakar felt safe and unjudgemental.
I too appreciated that they specifically asked permission to take photos.
posted by raccoon409 at 2:00 PM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
I too appreciated that they specifically asked permission to take photos.
posted by raccoon409 at 2:00 PM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
My experience in West Africa was that goats are smart and ornery, sheep are dumb and ornery, you could always tell them apart that way.
(You can also tell by the snout, which I had to learn because my village market butchers only ever hung the head up to tell you what they were selling, never the tail, which yes is a solid indicator in that region, but as smoke points out, not everywhere else - Africa's a big continent, y'all!)
posted by solotoro at 2:23 PM on October 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
(You can also tell by the snout, which I had to learn because my village market butchers only ever hung the head up to tell you what they were selling, never the tail, which yes is a solid indicator in that region, but as smoke points out, not everywhere else - Africa's a big continent, y'all!)
posted by solotoro at 2:23 PM on October 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
I can't speak to the societal elements everyone else is talking about, but I'd wear the hell out of those clothes. Thanks for sharing this!
posted by rednikki at 6:33 PM on October 29, 2017
posted by rednikki at 6:33 PM on October 29, 2017
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