10 january 2023, Flor Linckens
The magical and powerful landscape in the work of Léonard Pongo
Until 22 January, Kristof De Clercq Gallery in Ghent presents a solo exhibition by the Belgian photographer Léonard Pongo.
In the past few years, his work has been shown in a solo exhibition at Bozar in Brussels, at Mu.Zee in Ostend and at The Photographers' Gallery in London in the exhibition 'Presence: Five Contemporary African Photographers'. Pongo was invited to become part of the Futures photography platform, received a GOST First Photo Book Award (2020) and a Getty Reportage Grant (2018) and was nominated for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2022. In 2016, Photo District News (PDN) included him in their list of '30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch in 2016'. The photographer's work has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and National Geographic and last July, his work appeared in The New Yorker. In 2022, Pongo was invited for a residency at Black Rock Sénégal, founded by none other than Kehinde Wiley. Pongo is also part of The Photographic Collective.
In his multi-year project "Primordial Earth", Pongo takes us to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the former Belgian colony where the photographer's roots lie. There, he captures the diversity, mystery, beauty and magic of the landscape. The country houses the second largest (contiguous) rainforest in the world. Pongo considers the landscape as a living entity, a powerful protagonist with a will of its own, and presents it in the form of an allegory on themes such as "creation" and the "apocalypse". The sometimes surreal images, in his own unique visual language, are simultaneously inspired by the stories, symbolism and spirituality of Congolese traditions and Kasai cultures.
The series runs parallel to his earlier series "The Uncanny" — which was also photographed in the Democratic Republic of Congo — which won him several international awards (and recognition). As Pongo tried to better understand the area while seeking a personal connection to its heritage, he was confronted with certain stereotypes and prejudices that he had encountered as a European with a European education. A Western lens in which crisis, poverty and disaster are central. In "Primordial Earth" he tells a story about the planet and humanity in which the focus is not on the West, but on the Democratic Republic of Congo and in which man is subservient to the landscape and other forms of fauna — after all, humans only populate 10% of the earth's surface.
Pongo studied Social and Political Sciences at Maastricht University and subsequently trained as a documentary photographer. Gradually, his practice transformed and his photos took on a more abstract character with snapshot elements. His work has been collected by, among others, FOMU, Mu.ZEE, the Chazen Museum of Art and the Sindika Dokolo collection. Pongo divides his time between his long-running projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Brussels.
