Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou was born in 1965 in Porto-Novo, Benin, where he still lives and works.
He is the founder and director of the first photographic school in Benin which opened in 2013, and has recently been appointed the president of the Photographer’s Association of Porto-Novo. Agbodjélou is the recipient of the 2013 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize which he was awarded by the National Portrait Gallery in London, UK.
Using a daylight studio and a medium format film, the artist interprets the experience of a generation caught between tradition and progress.
He presented his first solo exhibition From Dahomey to Benin in 2010 in London. The Egungun Project was presented in Germany in 2013, followed by his latest solo exhibition Code Noir in 2014 in London; Egungun Masquerades at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town , South Africa in 2015 and, most recently Borderlands at Jack Bell Gallery in London, UK in 2016.
