Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou

Place: Porto-Novo

Born: 1965

Biography:

Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou is a Beninese photographer born in Porto-Novo in 1965. He is the son of Benin photographer Joseph Moise Agbodjelou (1912–2000) and was trained by his father. They were traveled together with a portable studio and used traditional colorful fabrics as a background for the people portraits they made. Leonce Agbodjelou founded the first Photography School in Benin and serves as the President of the Photographer's Association of Porto-Novo. His work includes portraiture series, Citizens of Porto-Novo, Musclemen, and the Egungun project. He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, including the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2013, National Portrait Gallery, London, and the African-Print Fashion Now!, Fowler Museum at UCLA. His works are in public collections around the world, including the Zurich Museum of Art, Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, Saatchi Collection in London, Carnegie Museum of Art, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, and Museum of Modern Art in Equatorial Guinea.