Photo London 2026

Presented at Photo London as part of a collaboration between Prix Pictet and Goodman Gallery, Alfredo Jaar’s ‘Searching for Africa in Life [For Koyo Kouoh]’ brings together all 2,128 covers of LIFE Magazine published between 1936 and 1996.

Jaar mobilises this absence as material – transforming the archive into a critical lens through which to examine the politics of representation.


At its peak, LIFE reached over thirteen million weekly readers, positioning itself as a window onto the world. Yet across six decades of circulation, African subjects appear only rarely. Jaar mobilises this absence as material – transforming the archive into a critical lens through which to examine the politics of representation.


What emerges is not only a record of omission, but a broader indictment of how knowledge is produced and circulated. The work exposes a persistent failure: to represent the diversity and complexity of the African continent beyond reductive, exoticising frames.