29.00 USD
By the great Walery of Paris, this is a wonderful image of Senegalese dancer Feral Benga, who, though lesser known today, rose to considerable fame alongside Josephine Baker as a performer at the Folies Bergere. His fame coincided with, and was possibly at least to some degree, connected with the "Negritude" movement in France at that time.
In the process of researching Monsieur Benga, we ran across a few interesting articles and blog posts, none of which contained a lot of historical data. We'll keep digging. Some of these expressed a distaste for the objectification of him as a sexual, possibly "homoerotic," figure, and a distaste for the way these images capitalized on the beauty of his form.
True, nothing about this image helps us learn a lot about the inner workings of Monsieur Benga's heart and mind, no more than there is in the images of most of the other stage and film performers we display here in our shop. They are about features, the features of the model, of the model's costume, of the photographic composition and process, and about history, the way they, as popular images, reflected our values and tastes at certain times and in certain places. And yes, they are sometimes (at least in part), about sex, and attributes of form, costume, expression, etc., that were seen as sexually attractive.
Feral Benga was, after all, a performance artist giving his audience what they wanted, and Monsieur Walery was a photographic artist, doing the same thing. We'd be very interested to learn more about Feral Benga and his history. That kind of knowledge always adds depth to our appreciation of an image. We definitely agree that it's important to remember that real people inhabit the bodies other people take pictures of, but even lacking any real biographical information, we LOVE this image! It is so evocative of its time, and so beautifully executed.
A very nice card, difficult to find, in fine condition.
Please examine our high res scans for detail.
Postage is for first class shipping in a secure photo mailer, and we happily combine shipping on all paper goods. If you purchase two cards, we will refund the postage on the second card, and when you purchase three or more cards from us at the same time, your shipping will be entirely free, except for international orders which, because of sudden increases in international shipping rates will still be charged one card's shipping fees on orders of three or more.