Selected by Roger Ballen, photographer, Johannesburg
I first encountered Belgian-Congolese photographer Léonard Pongo’s series The Uncanny (2023) through the Eiger Foundation’s Africa Photobook of the Year Awards submissions, for which I was a judge. What immediately struck me was how the series embodies the concept of the ‘uncanny’ – that unsettling space where the familiar becomes strange and the ordinary transforms into something mysterious. Pongo’s black-and-white photographs evoke this tension beautifully. His use of disorienting perspectives and long exposures creates images where figures dissolve, landscapes feel ungraspable and night and day blur into one another. This dreamlike quality reflects not just his personal experience of the Democratic Republic of Congo but also the larger complexities and contradictions of life in Africa. Immersing himself in the everyday, Pongo reveals the spiritual, the surreal and the psychological undercurrents that shape the world around him.
The uncanny in Pongo’s work is further heightened by his rejection of conventional storytelling. His untitled photographs resist categorisation and refuse to impose fixed narratives, mirroring the complexity of Congo itself – its layered history, cultural nuances and fragmented realities. This lack of titles removes the viewer’s reliance on language, forcing a purely emotional and intuitive engagement with the work. This open-endedness reflects the broader message of The Uncanny: there are no definitive paths, only fragmented experiences and subjective truths.
Pongo’s approach transforms photography from a medium of representation to one of introspection, asking viewers to confront their assumptions about Congo, the African continent and the act of seeing itself. It is this ability to create a deeply immersive, multilayered experience that continues to resonate with my own artistic exploration of the subconscious and the surreal, and with my belief in photography’s power to provoke rather than explain. Pongo’s images are not about offering answers or ‘the truth’ but about evoking questions and creating a space for reflection. What I find particularly remarkable is how Pongo captures the tension between presence and absence, between what is seen and what is felt. The figures in his images often seem to be disappearing, as though caught between worlds – a visual metaphor for the transient, ungraspable nature of identity and experience.
Pongo was born 1988 in Belgium and began his career as a documentary photographer, and later expanded his approach to include snapshots and abstraction, creating a distinctive visual style. In The Uncanny, he steps away from the reductive frameworks often used to depict Congo and Africa – frameworks rooted in conflict or exoticism – and instead invites the viewer to experience the overwhelming vibrancy, contradictions and nuances of life in Congo.
One such image is the photograph of cockroaches, whose stark and unsettling presence serves as a powerful metaphor for resilience and survival. These qualities are intrinsic not only to the creature itself but also to the broader narrative of life in Congo. By focusing on a subject often dismissed or reviled, Pongo invites the viewer to find beauty and meaning in unexpected places – a theme that aligns deeply with my own artistic exploration of the uncanny.
Another striking image is the long-exposure photograph of a figure dissolving into shadows, capturing the transient and elusive nature of understanding. It speaks to Pongo’s disorientation during his journey through Congo, as well as the fluidity of identity and memory. Taken together, these images challenge stereotypes and simplistic narratives, offering instead a vision of Congo – and Africa – steeped in nuance, complexity and humanity. By intertwining the spiritual, the secular and the uncanny, his work not only reveals the richness of Congo’s cultural and emotional landscape but also challenges preconceived notions of what African photography should be.
Léonard Pongo is a photographer and filmmaker working in Brussels and Kinshasa whose work incorporates photography, moving image, textile and various printing techniques. He is an associate researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa. Pongo’s work is currently on view at the Festival en Ville, Brussels, through 2 February, and will be featured at the Festival du Jeu de Paume, Paris, 7 February–23 March, and the Afropolitan Festival, Brussels, 27 February–2 March.
