Africa in the West’s eyes has stereotypically been seen through the gaze of Afro-pessimism, only seeing Africa has a place of disease, famine, war, and essentially primitive, and static. Through this gaze the west has sought out “primitive man” as an exotic, sensationalized idea that fits conveniently into the dramatic documentary work of many western photographers, such as Kevin Carter’s work with Sudanese famine victims and Steve Mcurry’s work with National Geographic. These sensationalized images play into the idea that Africa exists in a stagnant state, never evolving, and therefore not existing in the same modern context as the west. Moyo Okediji refutes these Afro-Pessimistic views vehemently; in his essay Les Demoiselles D'Avingnon, MamiWata, and African Modernity he states” The artistic object in Africa is constantly evolving with unpredictable volatility, because society is always mutating and no identity is static or permanently determined in its interpretive potential.” Moyo Okediji also takes this a step further, not just denouncing the ridiculous views of Afro-pessimist view, he evokes the theory of Al Jabara to heal the injustices and inequities of representation. These theories of balance, healing and evolving identity relate closely to the work of contemporary African Photographers. They are currently analyzing their constantly changing identity, and balancing the sensationalized and shallow techniques of representation the West deploys, by creating Anti-photogenic works, that are personal, humanistic in their approach and a direct rejection of Western techniques, that over sensationalize, primitivism and ultimately create a commodity out of Africa. Contemporary African photographers are deploying the theories Okediji sets in motion of Al jarbara, and inspired by Okediji's Mami Wata, they seek to balance out the vast collection of Afro-pessimistic work of the West, with photographic works that reject western techniques, and depict a dynamic, evolving, vital Africa, that seeks to balance out the illustrative Western view, with a realistic and humanistic view.
Images of starving children, famished victims, nude figures are the stereotypical images that Western eyes have seen. These type of images are a well established doctrine that many popular photographers seek out when they are "documenting" Africa. Photographers such as, Kevin Carter, who's images of Sudanese famine victims graced the front page of the New York Times, Steven Mccurry, who photographs for National Geographic, and has some of the most iconic images ever produced of Africa, and Leni Riefenstahl, who's admirer's included people such as Jane Goodall and Louis Leakey. These people are well established, highly admired Western photographers, how blatantly sell stereotypes of Africa that dehumanize and misinform. Leni Riefenstahl's African photographs are [considered] intrusive, obscene and encourage only spectacle." (138, Faris) by many people. She turned potential photographic subjects away if they showed up to her studio wearing clothes, and denied monetary payment to her models and instead paid in beads and oil. While her photographs were highly admired in the West, they are complete fabrications of a life that does not exist in Africa, and were sold to the West as documentary photography. Kevin Carter and Steve Mcurry's work also feeds in to this spectacle type photography. Carter's images are dehumanizing depictions of starving children, taken out of cultural context, they depict a brutal Sudanese world, while Mcurry's lens captures an exotic, primitive view of Africa. Rienfenstahl [Carter, and Mcurry's] African Photographer is revealing of a more profoundly disturbing feature characteristic of much modernist Wester Photographic practice. especially involving non-westerners." (141, Faris)
"Western critics have questioned the validity of contemporary African Art, to the extent of considering the notion of Black modernity as an oxymoron." (55, Okediji) These critics fail to realize that Africa changes and adapts to the same modern world that the West lives in. They fail to realize that Africa has participated in some of the same image making techniques