Published in 2013 by 5 Continents Editions, Facing Africa | L’Afrique en face gathers 45 portraits made by British photographer John Kenny during a seven-year project across Sub-Saharan Africa. The book focuses on encounters with indigenous communities in East, West, and Southern Africa, presenting people whose appearance, adornment, and dress remain closely connected to cultural traditions. Its scope is geographical, but its emphasis is human: rather than offering a general survey of the continent, it concentrates on the individual presence of those Kenny photographed.
The portraits are described as the result of access to traditional communities and of the photographer’s sustained curiosity about African lives. Body art, jewellery, hairstyles, and clothing are recorded with exceptional clarity, giving the images both documentary value and formal force. Details that might otherwise be treated as ethnographic accessories become central visual elements, while the directness of the portrait encounter asks the viewer to consider how identity is carried and presented through the body.
The book also carries a particular historical resonance. Its images were made as Africa—and the wider world—faced rapid and unprecedented change, so the portraits can be read not simply as records of custom but as attentive documents of people and practices negotiating continuity. That tension between cultural specificity and historical transformation gives the collection significance beyond its immediate visual appeal.
For collectors, the book’s strength lies in the coherence of its subject and method: a sustained, multi-year project distilled into a focused sequence of 45 portraits. The bilingual English/French publication, issued in hardcover at 112 pages and in a generous 21 × 32.2 cm format, gives this concentrated body of work a considered book form. It is an important volume for readers interested in portraiture, contemporary documentary photography, and representations of African cultural life.
