Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou

Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou is one of the most dynamic and creative contemporary photographers to be found in the Republic of Benin in West Africa. He was born in 1965 at Porto Novo, the coastal capital of the country near to the border with Nigeria. He acquired much of his initial mastery of photographic skills and knowledge from his father, who was the influential photographer Joseph Moise Agbodjelou (1912–2000). His father had joined the French army in 1935 and learnt his photographic skills in Perpignan in southwestern France. On his return to Dahomey (renamed the Republic of Benin in 1973) after World War II, he worked as a forest ranger but also as an itinerant photographer. In 1960 he opened his France Photo studio in Porto Novo, so named in memory of his service in the France. He worked full time until his retirement in 1994, and was president of the Association of the Photographers of Benin. It is from this background that Leonce Agbedjelou developed his life-long passion for photography from an early age. In the evenings as a child, Leonce watched his father develop and print black and white film and, when older, accompanied him on assignments as an assistant. However, since taking up photography professionally, Leonce has developed his own personal aesthetic, using a range of camera formats from 35 mm Single Reflexes to 6x9 medium format film to digital, that accord with his vision for a particular image (or series of images). He references but also transforms local trajectories of photography through his creative sensibilities within contemporary conceptual framings. In 2009, Leonce founded the first school of photography in the country to pass on his vision and expertise to another generation of Benin photographers. He has recently been elected president of the Photographer’s Association of Porto-Novo in recognition of his services to the art of photography, following in his father’s footsteps. In 1893 the Lagosian photographer Neils Walwin Holm, in the journal The Practical Photographer (“Photography in Lagos,” 4 [44]:211) stated that

Art · African history and culture studies · Photography and Visual Culture