Photos and videos document a changing Africa

'Possible Cities: Africa in Photography & Video" is a major exhibition now at Haverford College, developed in conjunction with the 2011 Mellon Symposium "Imaging Africa," an international event held there recently.

The display acknowledges that we live in a "city century" or "urban millennium," and that Africa is growing more citified at a faster rate than any other continent. Lagos, Nigeria, is one of the largest cities on Earth, and Nigeria's Nollywood is the world's third-largest and fastest-growing film industry.

That said, "Possible Cities" in its exhibition catalog declares itself sharply opposed to the "troubled" and "troubling" image of Africa that the "global media consistently circulates" (barren, it says, but for the two extreme pendulum swings of coverage: idyllic landscape with roaming wild beasts, and deep poverty, warfare, and corruption).

In this show, curated by anthropologist Ruti Talmor, a more complicated picture of Africa emerges, one that begins anew to explore the relationship between the continent's rich historical past and its future. This is reflected in the work on city life by four photographers and two video artists, each living in a particular cosmopolitan area portrayed.

Two strikingly different video presentations are equally compelling. One is an individual's daring - and optimistic - action that shows a problem on a public street but seems to suggest that, with a little help, the problem can be solved. In Eastleigh Crossing - created by the single-named artist couple IngridMwangiRobertHutter - Kenyan-born performance artist Ingrid Mwangi wades into a very large puddle of murky water on a busy street at Nairobi's edge, crowded with Somalian Muslim refugees. It's an area of veiled women where Somalian pirate money energizes the local economy.

Anthropologists recognize, from studying the way the sidewalk crowd follows Mwangi's every move as she thrashes about and cries out madly, that the fact people seem ready to help her if she falls is very significant. Such a response among strangers, we're told, is a decidedly urban trait. It suggests strength in that newly forming community - something that can be built upon. Societies that lack this may appear stable, but they break down easily.