Jacob Nzudie & Jean-Luc Cramatte - Supermarket

Publisher: Beak In The Air
Year: 2012
Format: Softcover With Flaps + Poster
Edition: 1st Edition
Condition: New / Sealed
Pages: 144
Size: 16.5 × 22.5cm

Jacob Nzudie photographs customers in a supermarket in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in front of their favorite aisles. The place is not insignificant. Intended for a privileged clientele, often composed of Western expatriates, it welcomes only a few Cameroonians who perceive it as a dream instrument, that of access to consumption. Even if it was initially professional and economic necessities that led Nzudie to make the store his studio, his photographic work explains the ambiguous relationships of his compatriots to urbanity and their desire for social advancement in a very hierarchical society.

When photographer Jean-Luc Cramatte discovered Jacob Nzudie, he was struck by the serial aspect and artistic potential of these images. As Sam Stourdzé, director of the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and also author of an interview with Jean-Luc Cramatte published here, analyses, this book brings together "photographs that, in their repetitions, add up the desires to appear; photographs that, by accumulation, compose a vast sociological portrait. And when all the artifices have fallen, it is the photograph itself that tells its story. It tells the other story, that of a poor image in the shadow of an urban jungle."