Award-winning photographer Amadou Kromah is just 25 years old, but he has already celebrating 10 years as a talented and popular photographer here in Madison and beyond.
“They started me out young,” Kromah tells Madison365, laughing. “This is going to be my 10th anniversary as a photographer here in Madison and I’m excited about this upcoming exhibition of my work.”
A special celebration, “A Photographic Journey: Preserving Art and Culture for a Decade by Amadou Kromah,” will take place Saturday, Nov. 1, 5-9 p.m. at the Common Wealth Gallery in downtown Madison, where attendees can see some of the highlights of Kromah’s great photography work over the last decade. Kromah describes the event as “an immersive celebration of resilience, culture, and creativity in Madison.”
His photo exhibit will run from Nov. 1-7, kicking off with that special meet-the-artist reception on Saturday, marking the official launch. There will be a brief program featuring remarks, community acknowledgments, and an introduction to Kromah’s vision.
“I’ve been doing event work, portrait work here in Madison, and this upcoming event will be about showing my vision from a portrait standpoint, about how I love to tell real-world stories,” Kromah says. “It’s mostly just showing my joy in the community, especially showcasing the Black community in everyday life.”
For the better part of a decade, Kromah has been capturing wonderful moments at community events, concerts, and celebrations and getting to know diverse groups of people in the greater Madison community through his photography.
“Working with the Overture Center and working with Urban League or Greater Madison, I most definitely have been able to get into a lot of major events, along with working with the UW football team,” Kromah says. “At the Overture Center, I enjoyed capturing famous artists from [singer] Patti LaBelle to [R&B and pop vocal group] Boyz II Men, it’s really been some great opportunities for me. When I was putting together this exhibit, it was hard to figure out what to really put into it because I’ve been in so many places just documenting things.”
Kromah says that he has 12 pieces already picked out, but plans on incorporating more as he prepares for the celebration.
“I will definitely be looking to add more intentional, smaller items, especially when it comes to community things,” he says. “My whole goal is to have a place where the community can come together and just remember. I think a very big part of being a photographer is documenting and capturing people and experiences.”
Kromah was a freshman at Madison La Follette when he first got the photography bug.
“I was maybe 14 years old or so, and it started with a school photo program they had at the library, always during lunchtime, and it was always a great little place to create. We did video projects here and there,” Kromah remembers. “And it expanded from there, where I started really falling in love with photography and really started loving meeting different people, experiencing different things. What really drew me into photography were all of the people I got to meet and all the great experiences I had with it.”
Kromah says he started to do small projects, including some photos for the Capital City Hues newspaper. It’s about that time that Frances Huntley-Cooper noticed him and encouraged him to enter the local Dane County NAACP ACT-SO (Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics) competition.
“I definitely got some great encouragement from Ms. Frances [Huntley-Cooper] at the NAACP,” Kromah says. “She saw my work and told me how beautiful it was and she helped me get into the ACT-SO program.”
Kromah went on to win the gold medal in photography at the Dane County competition and a silver medal in photography at the 2017 National ACT-SO Competition in Baltimore.
“That national contest was such a beautiful experience for me … I got to see a lot of young artists being passionate about the things they do,” Kromah remembers. “Especially growing up here in Madison, being a minority, it was really enjoyable seeing all the positive things going on at the NAACP convention in Baltimore.”
Since then, Kromah has been able to collaborate with notable organizations like UW–Madison, Amazon-Shopbop, American Family Insurance, Madison Magazine, and the Overture Center for the Arts, all of which have helped enrich his artistic journey and broaden the scope of his storytelling.
Saturday’s event at Common Wealth Gallery, 100 S. Baldwin St., will be Kromah’s first solo photography exhibit and will celebrate 10 years of capturing powerful and meaningful stories and moments throughout the community via a stunning collection of large, framed photographs. Kromah hopes that people will gain a deeper understanding of his artistic vision and creative process through the exhibit. Every photo on display will be available for purchase, he says.
And with 10 years of high-level photography in the books, Kromah is already looking to the future.
“My future goals, most definitely, are to travel, but Madison will always be home base for me,” he says. “I definitely still want to have this as my base of operation, but I would love to explore more around the country, to take my work – like the work I will be displaying at the art gallery – and to share that with more people, sell large prints, and, hopefully, one day be in museums. Most definitely, my hope, in the next five years or so, is to make a book.”
