Michel Kameni - Chez Cameruon Studio
January - August, 2020
Michel Kameni’s work, poetic and filled with tenderness, has an immense documentary strength. It tells us about Cameroon’s golden age, a period of transition in the wake of the new independence of many African countries.
The Kameni studio opened a few months after the independence of Cameroon, in the Briqueterie district of Yaoundé. By portraying its inhabitants with gentleness, spirit and passion, Michel Kameni has documented the rapid evolution of a postcolonial Yaoundé. The entire Cameroonian society - from city dwellers and provincials visiting Yaoundé, to Christians and Muslims - passed through his studio.
In his images, we can see the dreams aroused by Western fashion, the musical influences that have always inhabited the studio. Energy and hope, the natural fusion between tradition and modernity. Chez Cameroun Studio presents, for the first time in its entirety, the magnitude of Kameni' oeuvre at the African Studies Gallery.
Chez Cameroun Studio - A Documentary by Benjamin Hoffman