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The Cultural Frontline: The street photographers reframing Africa

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The street photographers reframing Africa

19/10/2019 GMT

BBC World Service - The Cultural Frontline, The street photographers reframing Africa

Profiling photographers who are capturing Africa’s optimism, dynamism and diversity

Adora Mba profiles the photographers who are capturing modern Africa’s optimism, dynamism and diversity.

Picture an Africa that is more than sunsets and safaris, or where war, poverty and famine aren’t the focus. Young street photographers are using their phones and digital cameras to document a continent that’s changing at breakneck speed. 
 
Adora Mba meets the talented young photographers who are subverting stereotype and capturing the everyday.
 
In Harare, husband-and-wife team Chiedza and Zash Chinhara want to show that there’s more to Zimbabwe than the Mugabe aftermath. She’s a stylist and he’s a photographer, and together they set up glossy fashion shoots in largely ignored parts of the city.
 
Moroccan street photographer Yoriyas shows us Casablanca in all its colour and contrast. He tells us how his North African heritage and his dance training have led to a unique style of composition: women in hijabs sit next to African B-Boys, while skyscrapers stand beside colonial buildings.
 
The photographs of Eyerusalem Jiregna capture the people of Ethiopia as they go to school, to work, and to worship. She explains why it’s important to tell their stories as a female photographer.
 
In Accra, Ghana, a new wave of photographers are showing what ordinary life is like for residents of one of Africa’s fastest growing cities.  Nana Kofi Acquah, Francis Kokoroko and Prince Gyasi, who have thousands of followers on Instagram, meet Adora during the Chale Wote festival, to explain why it’s so important to offer a counterpoint to the mainstream media by documenting the energy, optimism and diversity of the modern Africa in which they live.

Produced by Melissa FitzGerald and Fleur Macdonald, Blakeway Productions

Image: Francis Kokoroko (Credit: Nana Kofi Acquah)

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