BIOGRAPHY:

Nyaba Ouedraogo, a self-taught photographer, was born on June 10, 1978 in Bouyounou, Burkina Faso, and lives between Paris and Ouagadougou. The photographic vision of Nyaba L. Ouedraogo combines documentary influences with aesthetic research. His photographs are imbued with a desire to narrate African societies and its many mutations. These different series consist not of showing images for what they tell, but for what they translate.

Nyaba has received several awards, including that of the European Union at the 9th Rencontres de la Photographie in Bamako (2011). He is also a finalist of the Pictet Prize 2010, and winner of the Résidences Photoquai 2013 Musée du Quai Branly. He is nominated for the Pictet Prize in 2014 and the Prince Claus Award in 2015. His work is also part of the public collections of the Manchester Museum, Manchester, United Kingdom, the Blachère Foundation, Paris, France, the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France, as well as many private collections.

EXHIBITION: « Sculpter le temps »

First retrospective of the work of Nyaba Ouedraogo, the photographic exhibition « Sculpter le Temps » will present more than twenty portraits exhibited simultaneously at 5 and 26 of the Rue Saint Georges. These have been selected from several photographic series built over the last ten years, interacting with each other around a particular objective and sensitivity in the contemporary photographic landscape.

« Don’t we say that photography is able to freeze the moment, I say that photography is able to sculpt time.

We are all subject to the rhythm of time, but each of us live it and feel it differently. Time itself has no form or limit and can not be grasped or regulated.

Photography can sculpt time.

It allows us to fill our gaps between the perception of what we see and our « individual images ».

It is our physical experiences that complements the lack of time and space, both ephemeral and vague. My photographs want to escape classifications, my vision is to shake up the ideas and stereotypes of a changing Africa – I try to represent time and space as sensations shared by the viewer and the artist: it is the whole purpose of my job.

These images are imbued with a look and poetry of their own because even if this work is first of all a writing and a photographic vision, it does not fail to question a continent about its identity. »