Cimarron: Freedom and Masquerade

Hardback

Main Details

Title Cimarron: Freedom and Masquerade
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Charles Freger
Foreword by Ishmael Reed
Physical Properties
Format:Hardback
Pages:320
Dimensions(mm): Height 230,Width 180
Category/GenrePhotography and photographs
ISBN/Barcode 9780500022467
ClassificationsDewey:391.434
Audience
General
Illustrations 307 Illustrations, color

Publishing Details

Publisher Thames & Hudson Ltd
Imprint Thames & Hudson Ltd
Publication Date 28 March 2019
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

All across the Americas, from the 16th century onwards, enslaved Africans escaped their captors and struck out on their own. These runaways, having found their freedom, established their own communities or joined with indigenous peoples to forge new identities. Cimarron, borrowing a Spanish-American term for these fugitive former slaves, is a new series of photographic portraits of their descendants. From Brazil, Colombia, the Caribbean islands and Central America, as far as the southern United States, elaborate masquerades are staged that celebrate and keep alive the history and memory of African slaves and their creole or mixed-race descendants. Stock characters are portrayed in costume, or in grotesque or satirical representations. A huge variety of African tribal dress, wild ritual regalia and shimmering Mardi Gras outfits feature in breathtaking succession. Vividly coloured silks and cottons combine with woven fibres, leaves, feathers, and bodypaint; props include emblems of slavery and slavemasters - ropes, sticks, guns and machetes. These photographs record real people whose collective sense of memory, folk history and imagination dramatically challenges our expectations. Charles Freger's work has established a large and growing following among connoisseurs of contemporary photography, defining a new genre of documentary portraiture that extends and deepens our sense of the human past and the present.

Author Biography

Charles Freger is a photographer based in Rouen, France. Internationally acclaimed for his subtle and poetic portraiture, he has devoted himself to the representation of social groups. Previous books include Wilder Mann, Portraits in Lace and Yokainoshima. Ishmael Reed is the author of numerous bestselling novels, including the critically acclaimed Mumbo Jumbo and Conjugating Hindi. Two of his novels have been nominated for National Book Awards, and his poetry has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.