La Bourgeoise

Cameroonian photographer Samuel Fosso set up his own studio at the age of 13 in 1975. Soon after, he began experimenting with self-portraiture, assuming different characters and identities through costume and performance. In 1997, the Paris department store Magasins Tati commissioned a series of photographs in which Fosso impersonated a chef, a pirate, a marine and, in the case of this image, a ‘bourgeois’ woman in evening dress. La Bourgeoise featured in the Hayward Gallery’s 2005 group exhibition Africa Remix.