Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography gathers approximately 250 works by 30 artists from across the continent, an amazingly wide range of individual artistic responses to the unprecedented shifts taking place in Africa"s economic, social and cultural spheres. In addition to introducing audiences to the multiple imaginations and voices of today"s African artists, Snap Judgments explores the ways photo-based art has developed across the dialectic of traditional African aesthetic values and Western influences. Contemporary African photography has emerged in the post-World War II de-colonization movements, the quest for independent national identity, and the effects of globalization and modernity. Snap Judgments organizes the work that grew out of all that into four thematic groups--landscape; urban formations; the body and identity; and history and representation--groups that reflect the issues around which Africa"s experimental artists have ...