Two photographers — the fashion and fine art-minded Omar Victor Diop and the self-proclaimed cultural-critic, Antoine Tempe — recently teamed up to create an attention-grabbing photo series. Their angle? Re-casting classic stills from old Hollywood movies with “a representative sample of the cultural scenes in Dakar and Abidjan.” The project was funded by the Onomo International hotel group, and includes images like:
“Breakfast at Onomo’s” courtesy of ONOMOllywood.com
And….
“Thelma & Louise,” courtesy of ONOMOllywood.com
And…
“Psycho” courtesy of ONOMOllywood.com
You can find the rest of the photos and explore the artists’ back stories here. And for the impatient, here’s a sneak sound byte of Diop and Tempe describing their motive with the ONOMOllywood Series: “Cinema…transcends all barriers, be they geographic, cultural, or racial. Great movies of the past…feature iconic scenes that have tremendously influenced pop cultures of very different societies. African major cities weren’t left out.” There was also an in-depth interview with the photographers in yesterday’s Guardian, in which they talked culture, dreaming life, and the ever-jolly state of race relations in America.
