A fashionable wedding in Dakar, Senegal

Abstract

A young bride and groom, Zeynab Dieng (25) and Abdoulaye Ly (28), asked me to photograph their Muslim/Peulh wedding festivities in Dakar, Senegal. Dakarois wedding celebrations centre around the bride, who demonstrates her dignity and savoir faire as a new matron by appearing in a succession of fashionable outfits. Within the Senegalese fashion system, these outfits fall into the style categories labelled ‘ethnic’, ‘pan-African’ and ‘European’. Among the many Senegalese weddings that I have attended and photographed, the wedding of Abdoulaye and Zeynab was startlingly original in its fashions and its rituals. Abdoulaye, Zeynab and their siblings performed a ceremony of freedom on their own terms. My study addresses interwoven processes of colonization/decolonization. The first concerns my own far-from-complete process of attempting to decolonize my mind and practice. The second process concerns the refusing-to-die colonial dichotomy of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ with respect to fashion and weddings. Instead of applying colonial labels to the fashions and the wedding, I try to see these through the lens of the Dakarois youth imaginary. How do Zeynab, Abdoulaye and their contemporaries interpret the decolonizing/neo-colonizing forces they navigate in creating fashions and in shaping their own lives?