Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the 1980s by W. Ian Bourland (Author)

Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the 1980s by W. Ian Bourland (Author)

London, Duke University Press Books, 2019.

328 pp., il., 22.8 by 15.3 cm

Softcover book in good condition and the pages inside the book are clean. Ex-Library book.

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.

Reviews

Bourland’s book is a welcome showcase and exploration of Fani-Kayode’s work, especially in these times of renewed homophobia and racism.

Rachel Jagareski ― Foreword

The real strength of Bloodflowers resides in Bourland’s descriptive capabilities and the care he gives to a Black artist who has not been granted the scholarly attention he deserves. Known for stunningly beautiful, conceptually rich photographs of Black men, Fani-Kayode created images that are at once steeped in complex symbolism while also semiotically porous in their surrealism: a contradiction that Bourland unpacks with great critical sophistication.

Derek Conrad Murray ― Art Bulletin

Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

E. Baden ― Choice

Bloodflowers is a rich and detailed study of the photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode. . . . Bourland’s bookprovides much that will be of interest to students of photography and visual culture. . .

Darren Newbury ― Journal of British Studies

The brilliance of Bourland’s book is in the range of its learnedness. Its promise, though, lies in its wide applicability. The book should be read not simply for its bearing on Fani-Kayode. It should be engaged as a model for a deeply interdisclipinary and historically attuned art history and criticism.

Roderick A. Ferguson ― Nka

A timely contribution to a growing body of scholarship celebrating the late Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Bloodflowers is a deeply insightful and long-overdue study dedicated to a pioneering—and often overlooked—figure in 1980s diasporic image-making. In this fitting tribute, W. Ian Bourland takes us on a mesmerizing journey, offering new positions and context regarding Fani-Kayode’s transgressive photographic oeuvre—critical reading for anyone interested in contemporary art, photography, race, Africanist art history, visual culture, and queer politics. Chapeau!

Renée Mussai, Senior Curator and Head of Curatorial, Archive & Research at Autograph ABP, London

About the Author

W. Ian Bourland is Assistant Professor of Global Contemporary Art History at Georgetown University and editor of FAILE: Works on Wood.

English Edition

Rare to find.