CH. 2- Once Upon a Time- Yinka Shonibare

The artists in this chapter of the Cotton book are all dealing with photography in the tableau vivant style- that is, using involved set-ups and staged scenes to create a story or narrative. Many of these photographs are made as "quotations" or re-workings of older visual media- oftentimes etchings or paintings. The goal here with many of these artists is to demonstrate that photography functions as a continuation of an art historical tradition of visual storytelling that goes back hundreds of years.

One such artist is Yinka Shonibare, an artist born in Nigeria who lives and works in London. His series "Diary of a Victorian Dandy" features himself as the lead character of a series of images meant to show scenes of life in 19th century upper-class Britain, and they are loosely based on a series of etchings by Thomas Hogarth entitled "The Rake's Progress."

"Dairy of a Victorian Dandy, 14.00"

The titles of Yonibare's photographs indicate the time of day they are meant to "illustrate."












William Hogarth, "The Rake's Progress, Plate 8", 1735
















"Dairy of a Victorian Dandy, 3.00"














"Dairy of a Victorian Dandy, 11.00"
















"Dairy of a Victorian Dandy, 17.00"















"Dairy of a Victorian Dandy, 21.00"















"Diary of a Victorian Dandy" was a collision of performance and photography reflecting the nation's popular taste for the period costume drama and nostalgia for a utopian past at the heart of 'little' England. The production was shot on location over a period of three days in the opulent and sumptuous environment of a stately home in Hertfordshire. The artist Yinka Shonibare is the central character of the dandy and orchestrates an ensemble of professional actors, a make-up artist, a stylist, a photographer and a director. Behind the superficiality and self-satisfaction of Shonibare's Dandy lies a deeper social resonance. The work is a powerful parody of the artist's own life as a creative black British man living with a physical disability in contemporary Britain. He alludes to a black aspirational designer generation, the contradictory social codes implied in the conspicuous sartorial elegance of figures such as Chris Eubank and the keeping-up-appearances mentality of the contemporary British 'dude' scene.

The artist's imposing physical presence--he is the largest man and the only black man present in the photographs--underscores his role as the central character in each tableau. Whether he plays the rogue/hustler/provocateur, as in the billiard-room scene, Diary of a Victorian Dandy (17:00 hours), or the celebrated social lion, as in Diary of a Victorian Dandy (21:00 hours), Shonibare draws attention to the political, racial and sexual tensions that underlie these sumptuously constituted visual fictions. The episodes are based on any number of British genre paintings as well as on Hogarth's The Rake's Progress. Yet they convey Shonibare's own agonistic fantasies about private and institutional power. The images imply that although the artist may assume the role of Insider Hero or glamorous Man of Mystery, he is destined, because of race, to remain perpetually Other, even in his own imaginings.