Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the 1980s (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781478000686)

In Bloodflowers W. Ian Bourland examines the photography of Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955-1989), whose art is a touchstone for cultural debates surrounding questions of gender and queerness, race and diaspora, aesthetics and politics, and the enduring legacy of slavery and colonialism. Born in Nigeria, Fani-Kayode moved between artistic and cultural worlds in Washington, DC, New York, and London, where he produced the bulk of his provocative and often surrealist and homoerotic photographs of black men. Bourland situates Fani-Kayode's work in a time of global transition and traces how it exemplified and responded to profound social, cultural, and political change. In addition to his formal analyses of Fani-Kayode's portraiture, Bourland outlines the important influence that surrealism, neo-Romanticism, Yoruban religion, the AIDS crisis, experimental film, loft culture, and house and punk music had on Fani-Kayode's work. In so doing, Bourland offers new perspectives on a pivotal artist whose brief career continues to resonate with deep aesthetic and social meaning.

Author: W. Ian Bourland
ISBN-10: 1478000686
ISBN-13: 9781478000686
Publisher: Duke University Press
Language: English
Published: 02/15/2019
Pages: 336
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.55lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.10w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2019