Being There is a collaborative photographic project and photobook created by Senegalese fine-art photographer Omar Victor Diop and British director Lee Shulman, founder of TheAnonymous Project, published in 2023 by Éditions Textuel.
Theproject merges vintage mid-century color photography with modern performativeself-portraiture. Lee Shulman curated a collection of anonymous Kodachromecolor slides from the 1950s and 1960s that captured middle-class, predominantlywhite post-war American and European domestic life, including backyardbarbecues, beach outings, birthday parties, and suburban leisure. Omar VictorDiop, known for his theatrical self-portraits exploring Black identity andhistory, then posed and digitally inserted himself into roughly fifty of thesescenes. Directed and reassembled alongside Shulman, the staging matches thelighting, film grain, wardrobe, and color palette of the original slides,making Diop appear seamlessly embedded within these intimate moments.
Mid-centurycolor photography often projected an idealized, nostalgic vision of post-warprosperity, frequently masking the realities of racial segregation and societalexclusion. Diop's presence disrupts this narrative, using humor and performanceto question whose stories were recorded in informal vernacular history. Artcritic Taous Dahmani describes the project as an act of "repairingabsence", inserting a Black body into spaces where Black presence washistorically erased or marginalized. While visually warm and playful, theseries creates an intentional tension between the comfortable nostalgia ofretro imagery and the political realities of representation.
Thispublication by Textuel presented the series for the first time through 56 colorplates. It stands as a compelling example of how contemporary performance canre-examine historical archives to challenge dominant cultural narratives.
Being There is a collaborative photographic project and photobook created by Senegalese fine-art photographer Omar Victor Diop and British director Lee Shulman, founder of TheAnonymous Project, published in 2023 by Éditions Textuel.
Theproject merges vintage mid-century color photography with modern performativeself-portraiture. Lee Shulman curated a collection of anonymous Kodachromecolor slides from the 1950s and 1960s that captured middle-class, predominantlywhite post-war American and European domestic life, including backyardbarbecues, beach outings, birthday parties, and suburban leisure. Omar VictorDiop, known for his theatrical self-portraits exploring Black identity andhistory, then posed and digitally inserted himself into roughly fifty of thesescenes. Directed and reassembled alongside Shulman, the staging matches thelighting, film grain, wardrobe, and color palette of the original slides,making Diop appear seamlessly embedded within these intimate moments.
Mid-centurycolor photography often projected an idealized, nostalgic vision of post-warprosperity, frequently masking the realities of racial segregation and societalexclusion. Diop's presence disrupts this narrative, using humor and performanceto question whose stories were recorded in informal vernacular history. Artcritic Taous Dahmani describes the project as an act of "repairingabsence", inserting a Black body into spaces where Black presence washistorically erased or marginalized. While visually warm and playful, theseries creates an intentional tension between the comfortable nostalgia ofretro imagery and the political realities of representation.
Thispublication by Textuel presented the series for the first time through 56 colorplates. It stands as a compelling example of how contemporary performance canre-examine historical archives to challenge dominant cultural narratives.