Sammy Baloji's Kolwezi
Résumé
january 2009. Sammy Baloji is in lubumbashi, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo's katanga Province. He has just taken a series of photographs that, in time, will become the foundation for a major new work titled "Kolwezi".
Baloji's goal when he first set out to take the photographs was to document a new presence in Katanga: that of Chinese companies, which, in recent years, have become an increasingly visible feature of the region'mining landscape. Many of these companies have their local headquarters in the town of Kolwezi. Baloji has just returned from there, bearing odd images.
He had expected to find bustling centers of commerce. Instead, he encountered emptiness.