Madagascar: through her photos, Fifaliana Nantenaina plunges us into the "world before Covid"
View of the Marais Masay.
Basically, the districts of the capital Antananarivo are buried by a thick cloud of pollution.
RFI / Sarah Tétaud
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
At 29, Fifaliana Nantenaina, a rising and self-taught figure in Malagasy photography, is exhibiting for the fourth time since the start of her young career.
This exhibition sounds like a step back in time to a near past, without mask or barrier gesture, but which seems to have been lived an eternity ago.
A free dive into this "world before" to discover at Chick'n Art in Antananarivo until the end of the month.
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With our correspondent in Antananarivo,
Sarah Tétaud
He always sits on the window side to take advantage of the slowness of the taxi-be and freeze the moment in the street with his camera.
Fifaliana Nantenaina is a follower of movement, scenes captured on the spot.
The photographer unveils a dozen unpublished photos in this exhibition soberly titled “Miaina”.
"
"Miaina",
in Malagasy, means
"to breathe", he explains.
So, it's a bit like the concept of the exhibition, a breath of photographic air, a nod to this return to normal life that we had before the pandemic, which was never really normal for foreigners, but that's totally normal for us Malagasy.
They are snapshots of everyday life.
People are not masked in the photos.
The goal was really to make spectators forget this hassle that we have been experiencing on a daily basis since this pandemic
”.
Shake up Malagasy traditions
Originally, Fifaliana was a sound engineer on documentaries shot by her brother, a filmmaker.
He appreciates the sensitive side of the exercise.
From the search for the sound to be captured, he deviates on the image, to be captured.
The photographic technique, he acquired it through online courses.
The rest will be dictated by his sensitivity on the ground.
“
I particularly like this photo,” he
explains, for example.
It shows two old ladies walking from behind and moving away from my lens, and a dog approaching me.
I like this photo because it evokes the symbolism of the old people who leave and only the dogs who stay
”.
What the Tananarivian photographer also likes is disturbing.
Adept of the nude, he hopes to be able to show this facet of his art in his next exhibition, and to shake up a little the “soatoavina”, the wisdom and the traditional customs, so dear to the Malagasy people.
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