Paul Kodjo — Photoromance

Arles, La Croisière, through Oct 4 — the first major solo show in France for the Ivorian photographer, curated by Amandine Nana, co-produced with Palais de Tokyo. Back in Abidjan from 1970 he founded MAMEDIS, an avant-garde agency doing photography, cinema and publishing, and from 1971 ran photo-novels in the weekly Ivoire Dimanche — romantic comedies with twists that doubled as a record of a country building its own image. The negatives survive because Ananias Léki Dago's Rencontres du Sud spent fifteen years preserving them, with UCLA's Modern Endangered Archives Program picking it up in 2025. Kodjo died in 2021. The show is what fifteen unpaid years buys.