Antoine Tempé
The photographer Antoine Tempé was born in Paris in 1960. After studying business, he moved to New York in 1983 where he worked as a trader on Wall Street. “I came to photography through dance,” he explains. When I started to take an interest in photography, I was practicing dance a lot”. In 1989, he started as a photographer and covered New York parties for various European magazines. Photo magazine regularly publishes his images. Photographing his fellow dancers in his studio, he quickly came to collaborate with African-American dance companies. His first trip to Africa dates back to 1999, on the occasion of the Panafrican Film Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO). The following year, he embarked on a year-long photographic journey to West Africa and Madagascar. During the 4th Choreographic Meetings of Africa and the Indian Ocean, in Antananarivo, in 2001, he met the new generation of contemporary dancers from the African continent to whom he devoted studio and reportage work, giving rise in 2005 at the “Dancers of Africa” Exhibition (Columbia College in Chicago & Kaay Fecc Festival in Dakar). In 2011, the Fondation Zinsou devoted an exhibition to him entitled “Dansons Maintenant ! “. Invited by many dance festivals, leading photo workshops, he shares his time between Paris, Africa, Brazil and New York. His images have been published, among others, in Actuel, American Photo, Danser, Libération, Le Monde, Mouvement, The Village Voice.
Source : Panneau d’exposition « Dansons Maintenant ! », Cotonou, 2011, Fondation Zinsou. Dansons Maintenant ! 2011, Catalogue de l’Exposition, Fondation Zinsou 2012. Ayoko Mensah, « Antoine Tempé : photographie « Corps et graphiques » », in Africultures, n°62, Janvier – Mars 2005, p. 155-156
