Day after day and night after night, an unrehearsed theatre played out in the bustling streets of Abidjan; the economic capital of the Ivory Coast. Outcasts of the society took part as involuntary participants in what the locals called ‘Les fous d’Abidjan’; the madmen or crazy people of Abidjan. Some, completely naked men and women walking the streets. Others lying in the middle of the road, eating from trash bins and siting silently by the roadside. Although visible in the urban landscape, these ghostly existences were mostly ignored by the city’s cohabitants. Having just returned from his fashion studies in Paris,
Dorris Haron Kasco, an Ivorian himself and a young photographer, walked along and crossed the roads of Abidjan, also nicknamed as ‘la perle des lagunes’ or the ‘lagoon pearl’ due to its peculiar geographical location. Questioning where the solidarity usually found in everyday life in Africa had gone. Present but rejected, these madmen had been abandoned.
During Kasco’s studies the artist found an attraction for urban spaces rather than the polished world of fashion. After his graduation, and once he had returned to Abidjan in 1989, it was not the abundance of African culture he first noticed, but rather the people who had been forgotten. People living a ghostlike presence, often suffering from mental health issues, among the citizens in Abidjan. In the three years that followed Kasco trawled the city to document how they lived and survived in the commonplaces of the modern city: on roundabouts, at road intersections, on pavements, under bridges and in gutters.
Kasco’s photographs are confrontational. As a spectator to his social documentary work, the viewer is a witness to the unexplained existence of the “madmen” in Abidjan. Throughout history, major reforms and social change have been driven by similar impactful works, revealing various everyday sides of our lives and society we had become blind to see.
Dorris Haron Kasco photographic works ‘Les fous d’Abidjan’, showing the forgotten side of West Africa, rose to critically acclaim in the nineties - and the series was published by Revue Noire in a book by the same title in 1994. His work was included in two further publications: ‘Anthologie de la Photo Africaine’ (1998) and ‘Portrait Afrika’. In the years that followed,
Dorris Haron Kasco travelled his home country to create the first inventory of photographs from the Ivory Coast, which also led to film about the photograher August Azaglo; a film featured at the Bamako Encounters’ Photography Biennial in Mali in 2001. The series ‘Les fous d’Abidjan’ is as actual as ever and was re-exhibited at Paris Photo in 2016.
From the breakthrough series, ‘Les fous d’Abidjan’, three photographic editions were released by Eyestorm in an exclusive collaboration with
Dorris Haron Kasco in 2001 - and of the three works, two photo were originally included in the book from 1994. The works titled
Sans titre (Fou nu Dans la Rue) (‘Les fous d’Abidjan’, p 15) ,
Sans titre (Homme avec Bol) (‘Les fous d’Abidjan’, p 81) and
Sans titre (Dreadlocks) were printed as matt gelatin silver prints. Originally planned as editions of 200, only 20 were printed of each. The prints are signed, titled and numbered on verso.