Unfixed: Photography and Decolonial Imagination in West Africa by Jennifer Bajorek

In the 1990s, the work of west African photographers, such as Seydou Keïta, Malik Sidibé, Samuel Fosso and J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere, came to the attention of curators and collectors in Europe and North America. Their celebration in the West coincided with a wave of globalization in the art world, as well as the explosion of biennial culture and, in turn, the proliferation of voices, styles, and perspectives. Despite these shifts, there endures a dependence on theories of photography centered on its European and North American histories. Jennifer Bajorek's book Unfixed: Photography and Decolonial Imagination in West Africa, a compelling study on photography and the decolonial political imagination in Francophone west Africa, seeks to challenge this Eurocentrism. In Unfixed, Bajorek develops alternative conceptions of photography based on experiences in Francophone west Africa in the years leading up to and following independence from French colonial rule.