A new photography platform is launching in Cameroon. YaPhoto – Yaounde Photo Network is a new project based in Yaounde, dedicated to promoting photography and lens-based practices including video and new media arts. Adding to the local artistic landscape, with an international outlook, YaPhoto aims to nurture, support, and give exposure to an emerging generation of talented Cameroonian photographers.

Initiated by artist and curator Landry Mbassi, developed in collaboration with art historian and curator Christine Eyene, the project ambitions to create stimulating encounters between image-makers and audiences, both on a local and international scale. It will also seek to foster collaborations between similar photography platforms in Africa and beyond, and contribute to mutual enrichment through knowledge sharing and cultural dialogue.

YaPhoto starts off at the end of August 2016 as www.yaphoto.co, an independent online platform gathering news and opportunities mainly focusing on photography. This will be followed by a selection of Cameroonian photographers portfolios featured weekly from September onward. The project will then evolve as a series of workshops, professional encounters, exhibitions, educational and outreach programmes.

.

About the co-founders:

Christine Eyene is a UK-based art historian, critic and curator. She is a Research Fellow in Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire and is writing a thesis on South African photographer George Hallett at Birkbeck, University of London. She has been involved in a number of photography projects internationally, including: FORMAT International Photography Festival (2015), UK; Summer of Photography (2014), Belgium; 3rd  Photoquai Biennial (2011), France; Gwanza Photography Festival, Zimbabwe (2011); Brighton Photo Fringe (2010), UK.
Christine is member of jury of the next FORMAT International Photography Festival 2017 Open Call, and a nominator for Prix Pictet and Hasselblad Award.

Landry Mbassi is a visual artist, curator and art critic based in Yaounde. As an artist, his practice focuses on photography, video, installation and new media. He has been one of the curators of RAVY (Rencontres d’Arts Visuels de Yaoundé), Yaounde’s visual arts biennial, since 2008. In 2011 he participated in the creation of Collectif Kamera, a collective of young Cameroonian photographers aiming to promote photography as an art form in its own right.
As an art critic Landry has written for IAM – Intense Art Magazine and is a regular contributor to Mosaïques, Cameroon’s contemporary art and culture magazine.

.

www.yaphoto.co.