Alick Phiri19481960199017201983

Lusaka Street is an exploration of Zambias photographic past through the eyes of Zambian image-maker Alick Phiri. One of the few surviving black photographers that had access to the medium from the 1960s through the 1990s in Lusaka a time when the use of the camera was restricted in the country Phiri was trained at Lusakas Photo Art Studios before opening his own studio in Kanyama, making photography an integral part of his life. His unseen before photographic archive provides a rare insight into the everyday experience of people in the city. Even more importantly, his work is a document of the process of self-determination and self-representation of black Zambians at the time, recounted through situational portraits taken in the subject’s domestic sphere. A testament to the relevance of lens-based media within Zambias geographical, historical and social context, a tool for reimagining the past and reading the present.