Afi Venessa Appiah is a researcher, editor, and publisher specializing in African Studies, Film Studies, and Visual Culture. Currently pursuing a PhD in Cinema Studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, she holds a Master of Arts in Film Studies with a specialization in African Studies, as well as a double Bachelor of Arts in both disciplines. Afi’s contemplative approach finds objective significance in the realms of the intangible, complex and taboo.
Her thesis, “Within Double Restraint: The Aesthetics & Dialectics of Eroticism in Sub-Saharan Cinema,” is archived in the Library & Archives of Canada. Combining her academic research with experience in independent publishing and curation, she developed Emblematic Elusions: Eros in African Cinema, an educational chapbook series that utilizes the alluring potential of art book design to present film essays to encourage social, economic, and political discourse. This series is now available in bookstores and institutions across Africa, North America and Europe.
Afi is also the editor at Anteism Books, where she has participated in the publishing process for artists’ books by notable figures such as Solange Knowles, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Refik Anadol, Matthew Hansel, Sougwen Chung and many more.
Afi has also moderated and spoken on panels at Le Grand Palais (Paris), Printed Matter Inc. (New York), Hauser & Wirth (Los Angeles), Ujima Publications Workshop (Boston), and Nigra Iuventa Symposium (Montréal). Her written work appears in Chutney Magazine, Contemporary &, Montclair University Galleries and Book Arts Solidarity Network.
Links
Profile / Research Links
Afi Venessa’s Website
Afi Venessa’s Medium Page
Afi Venessa’s PHD Profile Page
Publication Links
“Black Canadian Print Cultures: Of Quiet and Enduring Legacies” (Contemporary And, 2025)
“Emblematic Elusions: Eros in African Cinema” by Afi Venessa Appiah (Fonts in Use, 2024)
“Within Double Restraint: The Dialectics & Aesthetics of Erotic [Re]presentation in African Cinema” (Carleton University, 2023)
Summary of Research Proposal Supported by 10×10 Photobooks Grant: Informal Photobook Practices in the Archive of “La Boule Noire”
This research project examines how informal photographic archives produced within African and diasporic cultural spaces can be understood as expanded forms of the photobook. Focusing on the found archives of “La Boule Noire,” a night cabaret operating in Abidjan throughout the 1970s, this research argues that personal and vernacular image collections function as photobooks, even when they do not take the form of bound, institutionally published works.
The history of the photobook has largely privileged authored, printed publications, often produced within Western or institutional contexts. This research proposes a critical redefinition of the form, one that includes private archives, performance documentation, posters and vernacular image collections. In African contexts, where the history of photobooks is shaped by colonial legacies of image production and circulation, photographic practices were often mediated through ethnographic, administrative, or commercial frameworks that privileged external authorship and institutional control over images. As a result, postcolonial local and vernacular modes of sequencing, preserving and sharing photographs frequently developed outside formal publishing structures. Recognizing these practices as photobooks challenges dominant narratives of the medium and expands its historiography.
Situated in Treichville, a key site of post-independence cultural life in Côte d’Ivoire, “La Boule Noire” functioned as a space of encounter, performance and self-representation. The unpublished archive connected to this venue, comprising family-held photographs, event documentation, posters and personal imagery, offers insight into how Black urban life was visually recorded and preserved outside formal institutions. These materials reflect not only aesthetic choices but also social structures, including nightlife economies, transnational cultural influences and evolving forms of identity within a rapidly modernizing city.
This research draws on direct access to these materials through an ongoing collaboration with designer and IFM-graduate Tidjane Tall (Paris), whose garment-making practice engages with his family’s archive of “La Boule Noire.” While his contemporary work is not the focus of this study, it demonstrates how the archive continues to circulate and acquire new meanings across generations and mediums, underscoring its status as an active and evolving visual system.
Methodologically, the project combines archival analysis, visual sequencing and oral history. The first phase involves the examination and categorization of selected materials, with particular attention to how images are grouped, repeated and preserved. This analysis considers how narrative structures emerge through accumulation and juxtaposition, producing forms of visual storytelling comparable to photobooks. It will also examine the presence of performers, both local and global, famous patrons and broader Pan-African cultural networks within the photo-based archive.
The second phase incorporates oral histories through interviews with individuals connected to “La Boule Noire,” including living family members, journalists, visitors, musicians and performers. These accounts will provide critical context for understanding the conditions of production, circulation and preservation of the images, particularly in relation to memory, migration and the transmission of cultural knowledge.
Finally, the project situates “La Boule Noire” within a broader network of Black diasporic visual practices. By identifying parallels with other informal archives across Africa and its diaspora, the research traces shared strategies of image-making and preservation that challenge conventional definitions of the photobook.
The significance of this research lies in its contribution to expanding the field of photobook history to include informal, collective and often unpublished materials. It challenges frameworks that prioritize authorship, print production and institutional validation, arguing instead that many African and diasporic visual histories exist in dispersed, non-linear forms. As such, the project proposes new methodological research approaches to reassemblage that account for fragmentation, circulation and lived experience.
In doing so, the research also addresses urgent questions of preservation and visibility. Archives such as that of “La Boule Noire” are often held within families or communities, making them vulnerable to loss or erasure. Recognizing these materials as part of photobook history not only broadens the field but also underscores the importance of sustaining and critically engaging these forms of cultural memory.
The outcome of this research will be a publishable essay and public presentation that articulates both a focused case study of “La Boule Noire” and a broader conceptual framework for understanding informal photobook practices. Ultimately, the project seeks to incorporate overlooked photo-based archives into the history of the photobook and to propose new ways of engaging with image-based African storytelling beyond its conventional boundaries.