Alun Be

Senegal, 1981

BiographyA self-taught photographer with a Master’s degree in architecture from the San Francisco Academy of Art, Alun Be lives and works between Senegal, France and the United States. He is part of a new generation of African photographers who are establishing creative new ways of perceiving ‘Africa’, throwing off the stereotyping colonial gaze and imagining new futures for the continent and its people. His work has explored female empowerment, technology and inter-generationality.

Alun Be’s central concern is African modernity. Be’s series Edification, which features pivotal moments in a young person’s life on the way to achieving individual potential, reflects on technology’s profound impact on society generally, and on African ways of being in particular. Depicting youth navigating and interpreting the world through virtual reality goggles, it refers to the ways in which culture, tradition and the past are connected with technology and the future.

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