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#146 Considering Portals | Atong Atem
Atong Atem’s work explores the inherent intimacy of portraiture and photography as well as the role photographers take as storytellers. Atem interrogates photography as a framework for looking at the world and positioning people in it. She takes framing into a fantastical direction with the small portals over the subjects’ faces, inviting the viewer to look at them through a surreal and constructed lens.
“The first photographs ever taken of Africans were colonial ethnographic depictions that presented the subjects in a really skewed and problematic way - I wanted to see what happens when we turn the lens on ourselves and subvert that ethnographic gaze. To me, it's a moment of power and reclamation and an opportunity for us to celebrate our personal and cultural identities.”