Born in 1970, Ivorian photographer Ananias Leki-Dago is a graduate of the Institut National Supérieur de l'Action et de l'Animation Culturelle in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. His images, celebrating African life and culture, play with light and shadow, whole and part, distance and proximity, mobility and immobility, the animate and the inanimate, the cityscape.

During a period of exile living in Europe, resulting from political unrest in his native Côte d'Ivoire, he collaborated internationally with magazines such as Africultures, Photonews, and Regards while deepening his own creative work, primarily in black and white. From 1997 to 2001, he served as the Official Photographer for the Marché des arts et du spectacle africains (MASA), based in Abidjan.

His photographs have been exhibited in museums and cultural spaces such as the Centre Pompidou and the Musée de l'Histoire de l'Immigration in Paris, France; Fondation Donwahi in Abidjan; the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden; the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and the Biennale of Contemporary African Art (Dak'Art) in Dakar, Senegal, and are part of the permanent collections of institutions such as the Fundació Vila Casas in Barcelona, Spain; the Fondation Sindika Dokolo in Luanda, Angola; the Harlem Studio Museum in New York, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Musée du Quai Branly and the Galeries Photo Fnac in Paris, France, as well as various international private collections.

In 2004, Ananias Leki-Dago was honored with Distinction by the Kodak Prize of Critical Photography in Paris, France. In 2009, he was awarded First Prize by PhotoAfrica in Tarifa, Spain. In 2019, Ananias Leki Dago represented the Côte d'Ivoire at the Biennale di Venezia, in Venice, Italy, participating in the exhibit "Ivory Coast: The Open Shadows of Memory".

Founder of the first international photography festival in Abidjan, Les Rencontres du Sud, and restorer of the negatives of Paul Kodjo - the "Father of Ivorian photography", Ananias Leki Dago is the author of five publications featuring his photographic works: Ananias Leki-Dago, photographe (Les éditions de l'oeil, 2003), Shebeen Blues (Éditions Gang, 2010), Mabati (Native Intelligence and Goethe-Institut Kenia, 2013), La Nawa (Éditions Gang, Conseil Régional de la Nawa, 2016), and Rainy Days Abidjan (Éditions Éburnie, 2019). He has also served as a photographer in residence for established artistic programs in Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean.

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Ananias Leki-Dago

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