The Beautiful Time: Photography by Sammy Baloji by The Africa Center

THE BEAUTIFUL TIME PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAMMY BALOJI \

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THE BEAUTIFUL TIME PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAMMY BALOJI Bogumil Jewsiewicki

Museum for African Art, New York

The Beautiful Time: Photography by Sammy Saloji is published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title organized by the Museum for African Art, New York, and is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Verizon Foundation.

NYCuLTURE State of the Arts

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verinwfoundation Editor: Kyle Bentley Publication coordinator: Donna Ghelerter Design: Florio Design Printed and bound by The Studley Press, MA Copyright 20100Museum for African Art, New York. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the Museum for African Art. ITIUSELPI FOR RFRICRII RRT Museum for African Art 36-01 43rd Avenue Long Island City, NY 11101 www.africanart.org Library of Congress Control Number: 2009942499 Paper bound ISBN:978-0945802-55-6 Distributed by: University of Washington Press P.O. Box 50096 Seattle, WA 98145-5096 www.washington.edu/uwpress

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FOREWORD

Elsie McCabe Thompson

THE BEAUTIFUL TIME: PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAMMY BALOJI

Bogumil Jewsiewicki

PLATES

FOREWORD The Museum for African Art has always encouraged the work

We owe a special thanks to guest curator Bogumil

of emerging contemporary artists from Africa as part of its

Jewsiewicki whose brilliance and enthusiasm are unparalleled. We also gratefully acknowledge the dedicated

mission. With this in mind, the museum is proud to present artist's first solo exhibition in the United States. This suite

professionals at the Museum for African Art, each of whom has made a contribution to this exhibition and catalogue:

of images by the Congolese photographer and video artist explores colonial architecture and copper mines in the city

Enid Schildkrout, chief curator and director of exhibitions, and Jerry Vogel, special advisor to the president, worked

of Lubumbashi and the southeastern Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. For Baloji and others of

closely with Dr. Jewsiewicki supporting and encouraging his curatorial vision from its inception. In addition, Lisa Binder,

his generation, who were born after the country's independence in 1960, the colonial period was a time when hard

assistant curator, has been an advocate of Baloji's art since her first encounter with him and his work in Bamako, Mali,

work transformed a sparsely inhabited area into a modern

in 2007. Thanks also to Donna Ghelerter, Carol Braide,

city. In contrast, Baloji's images portray an industrial environment haunted by the physical absence of humanity:

Brendan Wattenberg, Kate Caiazza, and Constance Smith, as well as Linda Florio for the beautiful book design, and Kyle

no one is inside the buildings, machines are rusting and idle, and train tracks sit without trains. Like many people in the

Bentley for his insightful editing. We owe special thanks also to Hubert Maheux,former director of the French Cultural

Congo today, Baloji aims to understand and reconnect two

Center, for assisting with the archival images and for en-

strikingly different eras.

couraging Sammy Baloji to become a photographer. Finally,

The Beautiful Time: Photography by Sammy Baloji as the

this exhibition would not be possible without the generous support of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Verizon Foundation. Elsie McCabe Thompson President, Museum for African Art

6,7

THE BEAUTIFUL TIME: PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAMMY BALOJI Bogumil Jewsiewicki

Capturing Absence, Bringing Back Life Sammy Baloji, born in Lubumbashi in 1978, is above all a photographer of absence. Through haunting pictures of the Democratic Republic of Congo's post-industrial landscape, Baloji expresses the deep feelings of loss experienced by Congolese youth. Juxtaposing archival images of African workers and colonial-era European officials against the ruins of factories and mines, he evokes the former prosperity of the region of Katanga â&#x20AC;&#x201D;central Africa's richest copper mining areaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and reveals African workers' contributions to the modern industrialism of yesteryear. Baloji's photographs and montages cry out against deindustrialization and give new life to the forgotten laborers.

Fig.1 Noted on this March 15,1940 image of the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga(UMHK)is an "access route to the concentrator," the "storage for crushed ore," and "offices of the concentrator." A concentrator is an industrial plant that produces concentrates from ore.

The historical and political context of Baloji's work is

ground rules for establishing colonies were agreed upon. A

complex. The landscapes he portrays are of a kind seen

large area of central Africa, known as the Congo Free State,

throughout the world, as factories and production, resources

was granted as a private preserve to Leopold II, King of

and profits, are moved from one continent to another, due

the Belgians, on the condition that its rivers and resources

to the vicissitudes of globalization. Yet parts of this history

would be open to outside European and American inves-

are specifically Congolese. In the late nineteenth century,

tors. During Leopold II's reign in the Congo, the extraction

European powers were busily partitioning African lands

and exportation of rubber and ivory resulted in millions of

among themselves. At the Berlin conference of 1884-85,

deaths. Worldwide protests against the horrific conditions

in the Congo Free State forced the Belgian government to

machinery. Congolese workers replaced other Africans, who

take control of the territory in 1908. The Belgians ruled the

had earlier been brought in from elsewhere in central and

Congo as a colony until independence in 1960. General

southern Africa, and Belgians replaced other Europeans.

Mobutu seized power in 1965 and in 1971 the country was

Men who ceased working for the company, whether they

renamed Zaire, and Katanga renamed Shaba. Zaire became

were fired or retired, had to leave the UMHK cities with their

the Democratic Republic of Congo and Shaba became

families, and return to their villages (fig. 2).

Katanga once again after Laurent-Desire Kabila overthrew the Mobutu regime in 1997.

At once authoritarian and paternalistic, the UMHK jealously watched over its black workers but also took good care of

Fig. 2 The calendars in this 2004 painting by Bwalya show mirrored images of the Gecamines, including the iconic smokestack and slag heap. The painting depicts an employee of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) paying a Congolese worker to leave discreetly under an arrangement where the mining company deferred to the IMF. On the left, the worker wears

an orange uniform from the Slag Treatment Plant Lubumbashi. The chimney on the calendar is smokingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the factory is working. On the right, a Gecamines worker sits across from the IMF employee. The calendar shows a chimney with very little smokeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the factories are barely functioning.

In Katanga, first copper, and then cobalt and uranium,

them in order to increase production. The company took a

served as the foundation of an industrial empire that shaped

long-term view of social policy, with the belief that a healthy,

the lives of its inhabitants. Throughout the colonial period,

well-nourished African worker guarantees good work and

Katangese mining was indistinguishable from the company

social stability. Medical care, food, housing, and running

that controlled it: the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga

water were all provided to workers and their families, whom

(UMHK,or Mining Union of Upper Katanga). Created in 1906,

the company considered its childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the bona (children)

the company was owned jointly by the Societe Generale

shaba (copper). In 1959, on the eve of the independence,

de Belgique and Tanganyika Concessions Ltd. The latter

the birth rate throughout the Congo was low, yet in the

belonged to Robert Williams, a Scottish entrepreneur

company's townships it was among the highest in the world.

who had announced the discovery of copper in Katanga in

Forty percent of the workers' children went to nursery

1902. The UMHK built its first foundry on the Lubumbashi

school, all of them to primary school; thirty percent of the

River in 1910, and copper began flowing out the following

boys went on to professional schools and the rest to the

year (fig. 1). Nearby, the Belgians had founded the city of

worksite; homemaking schools prepared wives and mothers

Elisabethville, now Lubumbashi, and connected it to the

for new roles as part of the support system for salaried male

Southern African railroad network. In 1921 the Societe

workers.

Generale de Belgique acquired primary ownership of the UMHK.'

At independence in 1960,the UMHK controlled the destinies of a hundred thousand people, of whom twenty thousand

The UMHK reduced the costs of production through mod-

were its workers. A few years later, the Congolese govern-

ernization and trained African workers in specialized tasks

ment declared itself the sole proprietor of the land and its

such as mining underground, driving cars, and operating

resources, and in 1967 the state-owned company Gecamines

8,9

(General Company of Quarries and Mines) replaced the

Kumwanza, inspired by the Zairianization of the 19705â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

UMHK. Exhausted by the extortions made by the Congolese

when companies were confiscated from foreigners and given

state and by President Mobutu, and destabilized by the

to Zairian citizensâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;"Katangized" what remained of the

second Shaba war of 1978, Gecamines ignored its social

modern legacy: jobs, houses, small business opportunities,

obligations throughout the 198os, was late in paying sala-

even the industrial installations. He legalized pillaging for

ries, and finally began laying off its workers and neglecting

copper and cobalt to be sold in South Africa and encouraged

its plants, a process that accelerated in the 19905 as the

ethnic divisions in order to transfer ownership of what little

Congolese state fell apart (fig. 3). The company, which had

was left to "true" Katangese.

provided between fifty and seventy percent of the country's foreign currency earnings, was no longer able to take care of

The absence of actual workers in Baloji's bleak industrial

its "children."

landscapes serves as a virtual monument to kazi, which had turned these men into laborers who, however exploited,

Fig.3 By the 138os,factories in Lubumbashi began to deteriorate. The mining companies had not kept up the facilities and needed to lay off a huge number of workers. Young men who felt it was their legacy to work in the mines were left to wander the property as if "visitors."

By the 19505, sixty percent of the workers in the mines were

were proud of the modern urban society they built. As

immigrants, mostly from the neighboring Kasai region.'

the mining company gradually stopped providing social

Access to civic benefits had been granted not through ethnic

services, the workers' children came to blame their fathers.

ties to the region but through kazi, the salaried labor that

From their point of view, the fathers mishandled their civic

bound the workers to the company and allowed them to

independence and used up all the advantages of industrial-

support their families.3 The ramifications of this policy are

ism for themselves, leaving their children nothing."Fathers"

still evident in the ethnic conflicts of today and are essential

became a social group, blamed for the mismanagement and

to the story of Sammy Baloji, himself the son of Kasaian

corruption perpetrated by Mobutu and the political elite

immigrants. One of the questions posed by many young

even though they had little influence or power over them.

Congolese in Katanga, and by Baloji in his art, is: who owns

Baloji's works are rooted in this history, in his very particu-

Katangaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;its natural resources and its modern infrastruc-

lar position in Katanga and in the world. He was born in

ture? This question has been present since the beginning of

Lubumbashi,the capital of Katanga, but his father came

the colonial period. Was it the colonial power (Belgium)? The

from the neighboring Kasai region. Swahili, the lingua

company owning the technology(UMHK,then Gecamines)?

franca of industrial Katanga, is Baloji's language even if he

Was it the stockholders? Or the workers? And if the work-

understands his parents'language, Ciluba.4 As an artist,

ers, which ones? Those with ethnic ties to the land or those

he exhibits throughout Africa and Europe,exchanging

from other parts of the Congo who served as the majority

ideas with critics and other artists, and his work takes on a

of the work force? The issue became all the more urgent

cosmopolitan form and point of view.

in the 19905 as the Provincial Governor Gabriel Kyungu wa

Sifting Through Memories Baloji's photographs grow out of the recent post-industrial period, when even bare existence became a challenge. The material vestiges of yesterday's "modernity" have turned into the means of survival: in order to raise money, mothers sell family furniture, refrigerators, and television sets. Public services, such as schooling, now cost money; civic workers receive no salaries and need to find money somehow. The Kasaians remained in Lubumbashi even after they lost their

Lubumbashi). The plant itself is owned by the Oukutumpu Mining Group (OMG),founded by George Forrest, son of a local white businessman who, before independence, was a UMHK subcontractor. Previously, Forrest himself did business with Gecamines and with the Mobutu state, and when his company's machines started sifting through the heap, people felt he was devouring the last symbol of their

jobs, businesses, and homes (unlike in other mining towns, such as Likasi and Kolwezi,from which they were expelled),

modernity.

and even though the Katangese, mobilized by Governor Kyungu, gave them a hard time. Ethnically mixed families

In the eyes of Lubumbashi's youth, while the new state proclaimed itself as heir to the legacy of the Congo's late

were broken up. Factories became ruins and the area turned into wasteland. Urban populations were reduced to poverty,

anti-colonialist hero Patrice Lumumba,5 Mobutu and his successors had handed the heap over to a white Katangese

and parents were unable to feed the thousands of children of the former bana shaba. Katangese and Kasaians alike

and his foreign associates who were "eating" what they

could only dig at the soil in hopes of finding a little cobalt

Figs. 4.5 Slag heaps and smoking chimney stacks remain icons of modernity in Lubumbashi. Both elements can be seen in this 1947 photograph of a workers'district called the "Kenya commune," as well as in this 2003 painting of the UMHK by Tinda Lwimba.

cobalt-rich heap to the Slag Treatment Plant Lubumbashi, or STL in French (French Societe pour le Traitement du Terril de

believe was built by their forefathers' suffering. Forrest, however, sees himself as someone who is carrying on the

ore, which they could sell cheaply to dealers.

industrial legacy and saving the Katangese economy and society. To that end, he even printed and distributed com-

Reproduced in hundreds of photographs and later in thousands of popular paintings and on Congolese banknotes,

memorative cotton fabric with the image of the heap and the

the Lubumbashi foundry chimney and slag heap—the waste

name of his plant (STL) and his company(OMG). Employing about four thousand workers, the company provides a

from copper refining—had long symbolized the workers' society and its modernity (figs. 4, 5). When the foundry

living to about twenty thousand people. As a result, locals feel very ambivalent about Forrest—descendant of a white

closed, as Governor Kyungu launched his campaign against Kasaians, the chimney stopped smoking.(Since at least

Katangese, former associate of the Mobutu regime—and his activities, which include supporting the arts in the area.

the early 196os, people in Lubumbashi had been saying that when the chimney stopped smoking, Kasaians would

When Sammy Baloji began making work about Katanga, he was financially assisted by George Forrest.

be gone.) Finally, in 2000,the Congolese state granted the

10, 11

Framing Time

paintings may portray Patrice Lumumba as a political Jesus

When Gecamines was about to be liquidated in 2005, old

Christ or a siren called mami wata or mamba muntu, which

photographs from the archives of the former UMHK surfaced

represents seduction by modernity. Baloji's montages,like

in Lubumbashi. They are not unique (there are copies in

Congolese popular paintings, bring up the past in order to

Belgium), but they were unknown in Katanga. At Sammy

challenge the present; the people in them are real, even

Baloji's suggestion and with the Malta Forrest Foundation's

if they are there by the miracle of digital representation.

financial support, Hubert Maheux,the director of the

His work can also be read as a form of portraiture. Baloli's

French Cultural Center in Lubumbashi at the time, had

portraits, however, are not of people but of objects, of dilapi-

them digitized.

dated buildings and abandoned machines.7 In fact, they are double portraits: of the objects in disrepair but also of time,

It was through these pictures that Baloji began exploring

his real subject. Two distinct time periods, the modern era

the palimpsest of local memories: workers' memories

and today, confront each other in his montages, and the gap

(Katangese as well as Kasaian), institutional memories and

between them is wide. Baloji makes time visible as an agent

social memories, memories of the achievement of modernity

of change, as a space in which men can search for answers.

and memories of exclusion, as they had built up over the

Fig.6 This photograph shows workers using a nyombolo tool to mine. This tool, in use during the 19505 and 6os, required the strength of several men. Later, the company was able to attach as many as four drilling machines to a central structure (wenyis) which required only one operator.

generations (fig. 6). Some of the older generation looked to

As an adolescent, Baloji experienced the pillaging and social

the past and proclaimed: "C'Etait la belle ĂŠpoque!"(It was

upheavals that occurred in Lubumbashi under Governor

the beautiful time!). Baloji digitally extracted people from

Kyungu. His parents were born in Kasai, and so his family

the historical images and laid them over the ruined indus-

suffered greatly, losing their home and other possessions.

trial sites of today. His montages maintain the boundaries

Baloji had to leave the best school in town for less expensive

between past and present; they juxtapose compositional

schools, yet over the years he managed to teach himself

elements rather than blending them. In the differences they

about art. At age fifteen, with his friend Douglas Masamuna,

reveal, they serve as a challenge to his peers to reclaim the

he created an informal group of young people in art: the

past and reintegrate a workers'societyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a call to a younger

Vicanos Club.8 With the club, Baloji tried out various creative

generation that inherited nothing but absence.

pursuits, including film, music, and theater. The young men came in contact with Western comic strips and soon realized,

Baloji's photography is deeply rooted in Katanga's visual

as Baloji explains:"We read a lot of European comics such

culture and in its tradition of presenting issues for debate.6

as Tintin, Lucky Luke, Tif and Tondu, etc. and we tended to

When looking at a locally made painting, people in Katanga

make cartoons that took place elsewhere. For instance we

exchange stories of their related experiences (fig. 7). Such

told stories of things that happened in the US without ever

having set foot there ... we realized we would do better to work on our own personal reality—tell stories from where

In September 2005 Johan Lagae, an architectural historian from the University of Ghent, and Marie-Francoise Plissart,

we were."9 Baloji went on to publish several comic strips with a youth magazine,School for Everybody, taking as sub-

a Belgian photographer, came to Lubumbashi to participate in the first Heritage Days held in the French Cultural Center.

jects corruption and cheating in education, an early sign of his attention to social issues, a theme more fully manifested

While driving through the region in search of old buildings, Lagae, Plissart, and Baloji passed through Likasi, a model

in his later montages.

city that the UMHK had built in thei93os, when Kasaian recruitment was at its height. Likasi was nearly empty of

When Baloji graduated from secondary school in 1998, his brother-in-law lent him a camera so he could earn some

Kasaians, who had been expelled in the 19905. Plissart suggested that the three of them photograph the city, each

money. He trained with photographer Simon Mukundayi and, later, learned audio-visual techniques from Pascal de

with his or her own camera, in order to construct a giant

Saint-Malo Maloji, a local television director and Vicanos Club member. Then, in 2003, having graduated from the

Fig.7 Well-worn paintings such as this would have hung in a Lubumbashi home and, later, sold on the secondhand market. Local legend states that this image is by Tshibumba Kanda Matulu, however, the painting was almost certainly made by an artist named Burozi. It was purchased in 1994 at a border market where Kasaians, driven from Lubumbashi, were selling their belongings. The caption, in Swahili,

reads,"Kazi nguvu, lufu karibu," meaning:"The work is hard, death is nearby." In the 19705 and 8os, people felt industrial work had the potential to work them to death but could also make ordinary people into modern men.Sammy Baloji, born during the time represented in this painting, takes this type of image as a visual starting point for his photographic series re-inscribing workers into the landscape.

panorama together."

University of Lubumbashi, he received his own camera from

The way Baloji looked at this town was enriched by his experience of life in Lubumbashi in the 1990s. He was struck

an aunt. The path to Sammy Baloji's artistic experimentation

by the absence of former workers—the people who had built

was set.

the modern landscape—and by details of a city that industrialism had abandoned. His camera moved over the buildings

In 2004, Hubert Maheux,a curator of cultural heritage, decided to produce an architectural guide to Lubumbashi.'° He

like a historian's eye, revealing traces of what was gone. In his photos, the streets are either empty or the human

involved Baloji in the project, providing him with equipment and a computer. Maheux also intended to publish a cultural

presence is ephemeral. Rather than existing in the present, the people who are shown entering or leaving the frame are

bulletin, and for the first issue asked Baloji to shoot pictures of the installations of the former UMHK. All agreed that the

witnesses to the past when the city was inhabited by work-

image of a smokestack was an obvious choice to represent Lubumbashi and Katanga on the bulletin cover. The bulletin

ing men. Baloji acknowledges the colonial presence through the architecture he shows, but his attention is focused on the now-absent workers who had given life to the city and on

project was ultimately abandoned, but from then on Baloji photographed mines and industrial installations at every

the fugitive existence of those who live there now.

opportunity.

Plissart's photos were accidentally destroyed, but she very much appreciated Baloji's images and suggested he keep

12, 13

working in Likasi. With support from the French Cultural

while its family is fighting "witches," that is, misfortune.

as though they were slaves of the colonial state and colonial

Center, he returned to Likasi and began digitally editing

companies,they made themselves into workmen and

his photos. Upon her return to Belgium, Plissart proposed

Baloji has struggled throughout his life and now,in his art, hopes to help his generation overcome the problems of

an exhibition at the School of Architecture of Cambrai in

deindustrialization and of ethnic exclusion. He shares the

Brussels, for which Baloji made three long horizontal assemblages from dozens of his Likasi photographs. The technique

name Baloji with one of his cousins, Tshiani, who was born the same year in the same town but was raised in Belgium

of digital assemblage recalls Plissart's earlier work in

and is now a Belgian citizen and recording artistâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a "white

Kinshasa, but while she maintains boundaries between her rectangular images, Baloji purposefully allows one image

man with frizzy hair," as he calls himself in one of his songs. "Certainly, you won't get back the old country, nor the old

to penetrate another, invading its space. He had recorded

times," he sings; but his lyrics also suggest that young

a tape of ambient noise in Likasi and played it during the exhibition in Brussels. The sounds brought the life and the

people should demand some control over the future.I3 The

people into the space, while the photographs themselves showed mostly the empty architecture.

art of both Balojis is part of the political questioning taken

passed jobs down to their descendants.'4 In the eyes of today's youth, their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, rather than the Europeans (with their capital and technology), created modernity. Their children, including those of Mobutu's generation who are the fathers of Baloji's generation, are seen as irresponsible. They pulled society apart after having broken the thread of the kazi, which bound one generation to the next. In his photographs,Sammy Baloji brings back previous generations of workers and, thus, begins filling the emptiness that envelops Katanga today.

up by their generation in the Congo. Uninterested in the past for itself, both turn it into memory and struggle with what should be there, but is not. Or at least is neither visible nor

In 2006, Baloji produced the video Memoire with the dancer and choreographer Faustin Linyekula. In his words, it is a

audible. Only through the work of memory can the present

work "about the impact that Gecamines had on our ances-

bio-phonie," while Sammy's montages are life stories of a society turned into a wasteland; the artists challenge

tors, our parents, and ourselves." Against an abandoned, desolate landscape, Linyekula can be seen dancing with an empty picture frame in his hands, used like a lens to

be understood. Tshiani calls his last album an "auto-

people to use the experience of the past in order to build better futures.

delineate parts of his body and his face (fig. 8). In this video, Baloji raises questions about the connections between the

Sammy Bakes work gives his city's history the dramatic

frame, the visual field, and the details that the image re-

power of tragedy, returning life to the many memories his

vealsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the same questions he poses in his digital montages.

images provoke. His pictures are informed by his Katangese experience, and speak to the relationship between the

Reclaiming Memory for the Future: Katanga in the World

generations. As he digs in the ruins of modernity to search

Sammy's official surname is Kabannbi but he prefers to

out the future via the past, he condemns the elders for

be called by the name he received at birth, Baloji, which

not knowing how to pass modernity on. Although the

means "witches" in Ciluba. The name refers to a child born

immigrants'forefathers came to the copper mines feeling

Fig.8 Film stills from Memoire (2006). Sammy Baloji worked with famed choreographer Faustin Linyekula to create a moving portrait of broken promises. The film captures the constraint felt by young people in Lubumbashi, but also highlights the energy and potential of the next generation.

Notes Belgium profited greatly from its mining activities. Following the Second World War,the country won a place at the peace conference due to its dealing in Katanga's metalsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;especially its uranium, which was used for the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb. 2 Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu,Bona Shaba abandonnes par leur pere: structures de l'autorite et histoire sociale de la famille ouvriere au Katanga 1910-2997(Paris: L'Harmattan, zool). 3 Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu and Bogumil Jewsiewicki, eds., Le travail hier et aujourd'hui. Memoires de Lubumbashi(Paris: L'Harmattan, 2004). 4 In industrial Katanga, people speak Swahili and French in public spaces (at work, in school, on the streets). At home, through the197os, most of them retained the languages of their ethnic groups. Much of the younger generation, however, speaks only Swahili and French. There are many ethnic languages in Katanga as well as in Kasai, as those regions are the creations of the colonial administration. 5 See Bogumil Jewsiewicki and others, A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art, exhibition and catalogue, Museum for African Art, 1999. 6 See Bogumil Jewsiewicki,"Zairian Popular Painting as Commodity and as Communication," in Mary Jo Arnoldi, Christraud M. Geary, and Kris L. Hardin, eds., African Material Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 334-55;"Painting in Zaire: From the Invention of the West to the Representation of Social Self," in Karen Barber, ed., Readings in African Popular Culture (Bloomington/London: Indiana University Press/James Curry, 1997), pp. 99-109; and Mami wata. La peinture urbaine au Congo (Paris: Gallimard, 2003).

8 In 2008, Baloji quit the Vicanos Club because he felt that the group had become too close to the Catholic Church. Raised a Protestant, but for a long time a student in Catholic schools, he ceased to practice his religion and searched for a secular intellectual milieu. With Douglas Masamuna,Gulda El Magambo, and Patrick Mudekereza, he formed a new association called Friends of the Hall of the Star, housed at the French Cultural Center. The reference to the first UMHK mine, called Star, Mine del'&one,shows the importance for them of the industrial past of the region. 9 Personal communication, Lubumbashi, January 26, 2007. io Hubert Maheux and others, Republique Democratique du Congo. Lubumbashi. Capitate miniere du Katanga 1920-2010. (Lubumbashi: L'architecture Espace Culturel Francophone de Lubumbashi, 2008). ii

Email from Marie-Francoise Plissart to the author, July 12, 2009. See Plissart and Filip De Boeck, Kinshasa: Tales ofthe Invisible City(Ghent, Belgium: Ludion, 2004). A related exhibition of Plissart's photographs and videos, Kinshasa, the Imaginary City, was curated by Filip De Boeck and Koen Van Synghel for the Belgian Pavilion at the 9th Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2004. It won the Golden Lion for best installation.

12 Personal communication, Quebec,September 18, 2009. 13 Baloji Tshiani,"Tout Ceci Ne Vous Rendra Pas le Congo"(None of This Will Get You Back the Congo), Hotel Impala, EMI France. 14 Until the late 1920s they were walked from their villages, often attached by a rope to prevent escape, and sold by the village chief as if they were slaves. This was the same region in which the East African slave trade had operated up to the late 189os.

7 Hugues Mayaya, whom Baloji trained, and George Senga Assani also make photographs of abandoned objects. In fact, the shift in focus from human faces to objects'"faces" seems to be a new trend among young Lubumbashi photographers.

MONTAGES

In Lubumbashi, great machines of industry decay in silence. This sprawling town, once the center of the copper mining industry of colonial Congo, now stands as a memorial to the broken promises of modernity. Elders recall years of struggle during the colonial era while the youth of today lament their lost potential. The past and present collide in Sammy Baloji's photographic montages. From archival photographs originally produced as documentation for the mining companies, Baloji extracts images of workers and officials. Placed within his own photographs of the present day mining sites, Baloji pulls these individuals through time.

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PORTRAITS AND LANDSCAPES

Decaying structures, slag heaps, and smokestacks comprise the landscape of present day Lubumbashi. Once icons of modernity, what is left of the barren mining town stands as a reminder of colonial hardship and post-colonial disappointment.

Sammy Baloji refers to his photographs of abandoned machinery as portraits. In a captured moment, he breathes life back into the rusted landscape. In Baloji's evocative work, the desolate wasteland seems filled with memories.

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MONTAGES

(Cover) This montage is one of a very few to include women and children. The figures stand at the bottom of the slag heap as the lowest subjects of the colonial state. Dressed as if they had just arrived from the village, they seem to await a promise of modernity from the mine. However, the desolation of the landscape and the abandoned machinery attest to the failure of this promise.

Baloji suggests that the archival figures in this montage represent all Congolese men who worked for the colonial state. There is no clear differentiation between workers and soldiers. However, looking carefully, one can see differences between the men. Very few are wearing shoes, a reminder that almost until the end of the colonial era shoes were a sign of high status for Congolese subjects.

0 The archival photographs in this montage were probably taken in the early twentieth century. The porters, carrying loads of firewood, are dressed in prison uniforms and are attached to one another by rope. Baloji has placed the prisoners along the tracks of a useless railway signaling a loss of potential.

0 In this image, an archival photograph of a prisoner is placed at the center of the current industrial wasteland where the railways connecting Kasai and Katanga appear to be disconnected. The chain around the man's neck serves as a reminder of the East African slave trade. It also recalls the roping together of prisoners by colonial officers to prevent their escape.

0 In Belgian colonial society, men and women were expected to dress formally for all official occasions, especially if they were to be seen by local inhabitants. This formality was not only a sign of belonging to high society, but was also seen as a means of leading by example. The placement of individuals atop a slag heap in this image evokes the grand life they were able to enjoy as a result of the mining economy below.

In twenty-first-century Lubumbashi,symbols of colonial power from the past are confronted with the industrial technology of the present day. The composition of this collage highlights an icon of the Belgian Colony: the table used by itinerant colonial officials for tax collection and census purposes.

(1) After seizing power in 1965, President Mobutu often visited industrial sites attempting to promote good management and hard work. Such events were the subject of wide coverage by the state-controlled media. This montage is composed of individuals from several archival photographs including Mobutu, television crews, and soldiers. Though it seems to depict Mobutu visiting a mine, Baloji is not re-creating a specific historical event; he is evoking the era.

0 In the early twentieth century workers from mining sites throughout the colonial world migrated to Katanga. Dressed in work attire from their home countries, these miners brought elements of global cultures with them. In this image,a worker from the 19205 in westernstyle clothing can be seen leaning on a stack of copper ingots. The archival figure is set at a modern-day crossroads: the idea of colonial modernity is joined with ruins and rails leading nowhere.

0 This montage is unusual in that Baloji melds a more recent photograph from the mining company archives with a current, interior industrial scene. The individuals have their backs turned to the viewer; they are in the process of leaving the picture frame as well as the period of deindustrialization.

0 This montage depicts the breadth of colonial control in the mining region, suggesting that both the workers and the soldiers are prisoners of the State. Overseen by a soldier, workers literally dig up the mineral wealth to fund the modern city in the background of the image. This modernity was never fully realized, even after the end of colonialism, leaving nothing but the memory of empty promises.

Photo Credits All works by Sammy Baloji are courtesy of the artist. Figs. 1, 3,4,6: Collection of zoth-century photographs. Courtesy of the Espace Culturel Francophone de Lubumbashi(French Cultural Forum) and the Malta Forrest Foundation Figs. 2, 5, 7: Courtesy Bogumil Jewsiewicki; photos by Winston Rodney,Jr.

AR works by Sammy Baloji are untitled, 2006.

SAMMY BALOJI (b. 1978, Lubumbashi, DRC) began working with photography and video after graduating from the University of Lubumbashi with a degree in Humanities Studies. In March 2005, he presented Vues de Likasi in Brussels. The series was later included in Cape 07 in Cape Town,South Africa. In December of 2006, Baloji exhibited his film Memoire at the Royal Flemish Theatre, and the project was selected for the Festival International du Film d'Aubagne in March 2007. Also in 2007 he exhibited at the French-Mozambican Cultural Centre of Maputo; in Brussels during Yambi 2007; in Photoquai, the First World Images Biennale, organized by the Musee du Quai Branly; and in the seventh edition of the Bamako Photography Biennale, where he received the Image Award from the Foundation Blachere and the Africa in Creation Award from HRA Pharma and CulturesFrance. In 2008, he participated in residencies at the Musee Royale de l'Afrique Centrale in Tervuren, Belgium and the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris. In 2009, Baloji exhibited his assemblages of Likasi at the Montreal Month of Photography, was a finalist for the French Pictet award, and received a 2009 Prince Claus award. BOGUMIL JEWSIEWICKI, Professor of History at the University Laval, Quebec, Canada, has conducted extensive historical, economic, and social research in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and has published more than fifty articles on postcolonial African history, Congolese popular culture, and urban painting. He was guest curator and catalogue editor for the Museum for African Art's traveling exhibition A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art(1999) and co-organized An/Sichte: Malerei aus dem Kongo 1990-2000(2001) at the Museum Ilk Volkerkunde in Vienna. Additional books include Art pictural zairois (1992); Cheri Samba: Hybridity ofan Art(1995), and Mami Wata: La peinture urbaine au Congo (2003). Dr. Jewsiewicki received the Distinguished Africanist award from the African Anthropologists Association (2006) and the Distinguished Africanist Anthropologist Award from the Association of Africanist Anthropologists (2006).

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