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Metamorphosis defines the work of Samuel Fosso; many historical eras coalesce to disrupt claims to an  intransigent and authentic ‘self’. Multiplicity and performance allow Fosso to transition between popish regalia to the cool gaze and lustrous afro of activist and academic Angela Davis. “Once I press the camera button, I am the character, I am not myself anymore” the maverick affirms. Fosso positions himself as a vessel to explore a plethora of global historical contexts beyond the household. Within his work portraiture does not operate as a tool for the consecration and veneration of a singular body. Instead he is unmoored from any fixed identity towards a radical elusiveness. 

Owing to his shapeshifting abilities, the photographer engages in iconographies of figures that have touched the Black diaspora. From figures such as Angela Davis to the Pope, Fosso deftly travels across a rich timeline of history, tracing a genealogy of diasporic consciousness against the backdrop of culture,religion and politics. Donning Davis’s distinctive ‘fro, Fosso represents the clamorous desires of activists demanding social justice,sentiments which reverberated around the post-colonies. Charged historical moments represented by seminal figures and their legacies are catapulted to the viewer’s present time, perhaps provoking introspection into how we stand in the wake of those who came before us. Although Fosso describes is work as apolitical, his penchant for depicting black political figures, such as in the self portrait The Chief,1997, places him within a genealogy of satirical African artists who depict political figures as complicit in the subjugation of African people.  Capturing an unnamed chief adorned in all his ill-gotten regalia, Fosso turns a castigating gaze towards post-colonial African figureheads and despots who are as lecherous as the colonisers, desperately clinging to power and performing state rituals of self-aggrandisement.  In this regard, the photographer echoes the sentiments of post-colonial critics such as Mbembe who examine the obscenity and proclivity of wealth displays by politicians, selling out their citizens in deference to the Neo-liberal powers that be. Many politicians on the continent are sure to come to mind. Nevertheless, the power relation conveyed through portraits is brought to the forefront of the viewing experience.

The late curator Okunwi Enwezor described Fosso’s studio as a ‘space for the mediation of history and social identity’. Despite growing up in the socially conservative Central African Republic, Fosso was never shy to experiment with makeup and hair. The reign of Jean-Bédel Bokassa forbade ostentatious Americanised clothing yet Fosso’s studio was a site of youthful rebellion against autocracy and a haven for bold self-representation. Fosso continuously subverts dominant representations attached to black masculinity, pertinently demonstrated in the series 70s Lifestyle.Ornately bejewelled and clad in stiletto heels, Fosso challenges masculine orthodoxy and welcomes the queering of the black masculine body. Fosso is entirely the visual sovereign in his photographers; his eyes unwaveringly meet the camera in an admirable self-assurance.Masculinity/femininity are in playful dialogue with onto one another. Undeniable elements of Camp are visible across Fosso’s oeuvre. The Queer community have championed this praxis of defying and  re-signifying gendered aesthetics, introducing a radical Third space of self-representation.

Disruption and theatricality is what makes Fosso's work all the more alluring. Fosso shares that he hopes to take his work and archive back to Nigeria and bequeath it to a museum in  Ebonyi State.

This year the Cameroonian won the 2023 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize, awarded by Shoair Mavlian, director of The Photographer's gallery in London.