Photographers from DR Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has a photographic tradition as rich as its music. In the 1950s and 1960s, Jean Depara photographed the bars, dance halls and stylish young people of Léopoldville, today's Kinshasa, as rumba spread across Africa, and studio photographers made portraits for the city's growing middle class.

Contemporary photographers from DR Congo work with memory and history: Sammy Baloji, from Lubumbashi, combines old colonial photographs with pictures of today's mining landscapes in Katanga; Kiripi Katembo photographed Kinshasa reflected in its puddles. A younger generation records life in the east of the country, where conflict has lasted for decades. These are the country's photographers, most looked-up first. See also Congolese popular painting and Congolese rumba.