MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, is a publication which is committed to establishing, representing and promoting a collective of woman photographers of an African descent.
MFON’ was founded just over a year ago, by Lalah Amatullah Barrayn and Adama Delphine Fawunda. The book is dedicated solely to 118 woman photographers of African descent. The title ‘MFON’ takes its name from Mmekutmfon ‘Mfon’ Essien, the Nigerian born American photographer who died ages 34 form breast cancer, the day before her series “The Amazon’s New Clothes” was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art as part of the critically acclaimed exhibition “Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers.”
The first edition of the book features over 100 woman from across the Diaspora. The book features a collection of essays written by women scholars, journalists and artists. The main of the book is too;
- Promote an international representative voice of women photographers of African descent.
- Fill a void while creating a space for intellectual discourse around issues represented by women photographers of African descent.
- Create a powerful collective of women photographers, journalists, and scholars to build their practices through solid representation of their voices within the field of photography.
Diaspora – A diaspora is a scattered population whose origin lies in a separate geographic locale. In particular, diaspora has come to refer to involuntary mass dispersion of a population from its indigenous homeland. An example of a diaspora is the 6th century exile of Jews from outside Israel to Babylon.
The book has been featured in numerous publications, Vogue, The New York Times and the BBC. They first attempted to publish the book in 2006, in which they where unsuccessful, as the publishing houses saw to relevant market for the book. But now with the rise of black culter coming more widely accepted the the main stream market.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/proof/2018/march/women-photographers-african-diaspora/