The le19M de la Photographie des Métiers d’Art endowment : Tamibé Bourdanné

Tamibé Bourdanné is a photographer based in London. Originally from Chad, Niger and Nigeria, but born and raised in Côte d’Ivoire. His work revolves around places, environments and people. A documentary and spontaneous photographer at heart, He loves to show the world from different perspectives, mainly from an ethnographic point of view . There’s so much beauty in Africa, he believes and  takes on a mission to expose it to the world through his delicate and precise approach to storytelling. Central to his practice is the way he interpret the interaction between space, shapes and tones, in order to form an image.

“This project came about as a collaboration between myself and Fashion designer Bubu Ogisi. Bubu and I both found ourselves in Benin where we connected and through our exploration of vodou culture decided to elaborate a project with our own interpretations. Produced during a research residency in Benin Republic in 2023, Synthetic Dreams delivers an alternative vision of masquerading culture manifested by layering spirits through reused materials.
Masquerades are elements of the most sacred institutions in many African cultures, representing part of a larger cultural ethos whose purpose is to ward off enemies and evil spirits. The morphological characteristics of the work come from my studies of African mask ranges and I also reference animal textures through the layering of cloth. The final images emerge from a comparison of individual objects, which evince similarities close enough to justify speaking of a relative continuity of form or combination of forms. The sum of similarities then defines the style.”

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