FotoShoot Magazine in collaboration with Harambee Art Gallery is pleased to announce a creative issue featuring the diverse talents of artists, photographers, and filmmakers of African descent participating in FOTOFEST BIENNIAL 2020: AFRICAN COSMOLOGIES “Photography, Time and the Other”. Curated by Mark Sealy MBE, Director of the renowned London-based photographic art institution Autograph ABP. African Cosmologies is a large-scale group exhibition that examines the complex relationships between contemporary life in Africa, the African diaspora, and global histories of colonialism, photography, and rights and representation. The exhibition considers the history of photography as one closely tied to a colonial project and Western image production, highlighting artists who confront and challenge this shortsighted, albeit canonized lineage.

The artists, photographers, and filmmakers participating under the Harambee Art Gallery entry for FOTOFEST is curated by Charles Washington, executive director and founder of the art gallery. Charles is an environmental public artist that uses items and materials from the world around him to create art masterpieces. He has curated the works of art and photos that you see in the March issue of FotoShoot Magazine.

Unfortunately, FOTOFEST 2020 was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.  This issue of FSM is dedicated to the creatives from FotoShoot Magazine, Harambee Art Gallery, and Risky Cereal Films participating in FOTOFEST 2020.

FotoFest, the Houston-based international arts and learning organization, announces the dates and curatorial focus for its Eighteenth International Biennial, the FotoFest Biennial 2020. Taking place March 7–April 19, 2020. The central program of the citywide festival, AFRICAN COSMOLOGIES—Photography, Time, and the Other, will focus on artists of Africa and its diaspora. The FotoFest Biennial 2020 marks the first time in its 37-year history that the Biennial’s central exhibition will focus on artists of African
origin.

Mark Sealy MBE, a British curator, writer, and cultural producer with a special interest in the relationship between photography and social change, identity politics and human rights. Since 1991, Sealy has been the director of Autograph ABP, the London-based non-profit photographic arts agency dedicated to highlighting issues of identity, representation, human rights and social justice. Formerly known as the Association of Black Photographers, Autograph ABP is an advocate of human rights worldwide, hosting exhibitions on the subjects of Pan African politics, and the photographic legacy of lynching in the United States, among others.