Living in the UK of Ghanaian heritage, Melanie Issaka challenges the stereotypes of representation, especially in portraiture. Instead of photographing with a camera, she produces life-size photograms with her body as the primary material. The cyanotypes and other photograms work like photographic negatives and reverse her black body into white forms and surfaces, creating a graphic answer to the historic hidden visibility of her ancestry. She explores her body as a physical and cultural identity through her experimental photo work and tackles the idea of colour in a white world.

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We see a white silhouette of a human body against a blue background on a giant canvas clamped with pegs on studio stands. Behind the canvas, a black body is jumping in the same posture as the white body, puzzling the spectator. In this work, Melanie Issaka brings visual art and performance together in one piece. The body is a tool to describe her feelings and show her presence. "In my current work, to work with my body is important because I am interested in portraiture and representation. I found the traditional way of taking photographs limiting or even too easy. There are many hidden signifiers, and oftentimes, photos are layered with many interpretations and stereotypes of reading a person. Many standard connotations we've been taught to read arise with most representations. But different countries and societies have different ways of reading an image. And I found that working with my body allowed me to record a person's presence in a different way."
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Cyanotypes  

Cyanotype is an old technique, discovered by John Herschel in the 19th century, that produces prints with a monochrome cyan-blue colour, for which the paper must be sensitised and exposed to UV sunlight. A cyanotype can be used as a photogram because any object on the paper or canvas leaves an image. Issaka used the technique to make performance-like artworks. "I work with photograms and cyanotype prints, which are contact prints. I coated the fabric with the cyanotype chemicals and exposed it to light. With the cyanotype print, I found it interesting to re-enact and perform. I discovered that the more I made these works, the more performative the process became. Working and making the cyanotypes, lying outside for a long period, the duration became an essential part of the piece. Because of the weather in the UK, it might mean that I'll be lying outside for 30 minutes. It became an investigation into how my space shapes me and how our environment shapes us."

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Physicality

The huge papers and the analogue process play the role of tangible physicality as the most suitable vehicle for her physical message. Issaka explains the reason she chose this process. "For my job, I mostly photograph digitally, but my personal work needs to be very physical. I need to be able to touch it for it to be real. Physical print is important to me; I've always painted, drawn, and printed. Also, during the covid lockdowns, I needed to keep working, and these prints allowed me to work from home, in my bedroom and the garden."

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Black Identity

As a black person born in Ghana and living in the UK, Melanie Issaka asked herself what it is like to be a black person in a white space. There is always the question of where you come from and how you ended up where you are. "I always ask, where am I from? What am I doing in this space? And once I started to make these works, I was very interested in the scale of it and making a one-to-one representation of myself because it became about actually claiming the space that I take in."

The black identity has never been visible in the Western world, even less in photography. For Issaka, the black presence in history gradually became an important topic. "I investigated stereotypes of black women and found out that I knew more about Western history than Ghanaian history. I was very inquisitive and started to reach out and read specific kinds of literature from African American, Ghanaian and Nigerian writers. The idea of Black Britishness became a conversation topic as well. Usually, whenever we talked about blackness, it was always through an American point of view."
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Becoming Visible

In another series of camera-less self-portraits Locating the Personal, we see white bodies against a black background, with a reddish glow around the silhouette, seemingly an aura or a radiance of energy. Issaka made these full-scale images in the safe confinement of her bedroom by laying on the sensitised photo paper. We could read the photo works as a way of regaining visibility. "This work meant me becoming more visible and playing with photography. The light is critical in the exposure because the more you expose, the more visible the subject becomes. But also, if there’s too much light, it becomes completely dark, and you don't have an image, or you don't have a visible, traditional image."
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I became the subject and the artist.

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Melanie Issaka wanted to omit the standard questions of representation when making portraits with a camera, like how to capture the moment and set up the setting or construct the scene. "I wanted to move those questions out of the equation. The camera, canvas and I were becoming one; I became the subject and the artist. It allowed me to play and create moments of unpredictability. I might capture myself in a way that I might not want to be seen."

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Dark and Lovely

In the series Dark and Lovely, a title taken from a famous brand of black hair care, we see photograms of hair. The abstract figures of hair metaphorically stand for Issaka's identity, leaving out too apparent connotations. "Hair is important in my culture. We spend a long time at the hairdressers. Hair also has a communal and social function. I took shed hair, mine and of my family members or friends, and made contact prints with it. It is the idea of identity and representation. You can find much about a person from their hair follicles. Also, there is an element of trust in people giving me their hair because of different connotations, like superstitions."
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Power of photography

Photography is inherently related to power. The photographer's gaze can never be neutral because a historical-political power structure is interwoven with the medium. In an interview with the British Journal of Photography, Issaka called the camera a violent tool. She tries to reverse this with her work by regaining the power over the image. "I started to study photography during the past six years. Photography of the 19th and 20th centuries of black people was often made for categorising them for showing people of remote areas. The images I saw of Africa, whether in videos, photos or mainstream media, gave this idea of starving African children. I realised that when I'm photographing people, I bring with me my gaze. It's always the photographer's gaze and the photographer's intention that is radiated through the image. I can photograph someone and make them up to be whomever I want them to be. It all depends on whose gaze it is. If an image has the notion of opacity, of not being clear, everyone has their interpretation. There should be a balance between power and photography."

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Melanie Issaka (b. 1994, Ghana) is a visual artist living and working in London, UK. She graduated with a Graphic Design BA from The University of Brighton and a Photography MA from The Royal College of Art. Melanie aims to develop a social practice concerned with representation, history, and language regarding the intersectionality of Race and Gender and to explore the materiality of print and lens-based media.

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