Voila. A word uttered after the legerdemain dazzles the audience with some spoof or light-of-the-hand heist, or when witnessing Delphine Diaw Diallo’s visual mecca back to Senegal. Magic Studio Photo, Diallo’s premier exhibit at Brooklyn boutique Harriet’s Alter Ego, explores Diallo’s Senegalese lineage with the visceral beauty of acknowledgement, family, love and discovery within an African context.
The concept of the Magic Photo Studio began as a personal project in Senegal where she sought to recapture her Senegalese family blood to “keep the family images alive for her child to remember the African in her blood.” In an abstract 20-minute video and more than 15 images of Diallo’s family, Diallo infuses stark colors, weathered images and negatives; pencil, paint and memories, into black and white prints, reminding the once non-believers of the initial Magic Photo Studio of Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibe’s Bamako era that the eternity captured in an image is truly magic and supernatural. Like Keita and Sidibe, Diallo’s images are definitive, allowing the subject to tell his or her unique story.
Diallo, a Paris-bred graphic artist relocated to New York less than a year ago after becoming exhausted with the graphic design for music production scene in France and its overall lack of creative outlet, especially for the young Arab and African community. Diallo hopes the exhibit captures the natural beauty and timelessness of Africanism in hopes of “changing people’s image of Africa and not to focus on the exotic.” Diallo’s mosaic denies Afro-pessimism, but embraces the silent sense of security and realism found when reconnecting with family. With magical permanence and grace, Diallo’s work leaves a feeling of curiosity and wonderment, or how did she do that?
Magic Photo Studio is at Harriet’s Alter Ego in New York through June 3.
