In this episode of Art and Processes, Emeka Okereke sits down with Cameroonian photographer Angèle Etoundi Essamba — a defining voice in contemporary African photography whose four-decade career has centered the presence, dignity, and strength of the Black female body.

Born in Douala in 1962, Angèle left Cameroon at nine years old for medical treatment in France — a rupture that shaped a lifelong meditation on displacement, belonging, and "home."

The conversation moves from that culture shock, to the moment in 1980s Amsterdam when she realized the Black community around her was visually absent — and decided to put the Black woman at the center of her frame, on her own terms.

They trace her major bodies of work: Série Noire, Afro Cosmos, and the Renaissance series (including The Girl with the Amber Earring), and talk about photography in the age of social media and AI, motherhood and darkroom discipline, and what freedom and dignity look like when "progress" means moving away from stagnation rather than climbing a ladder.

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