The Future is Blinking was the first exhibition of Museum Rietberg to focus on the work of the earliest local photographers working in West and Central Africa.
Towards the end of the 19th century, together with their clients, they began to produce captivating images in outdoor studios. Future viewers of their images were always kept in mind; the sitters posed as they wanted to be seen by posterity. These images are remarkably different from the work of colonial photographers whose work served to confirm the Other as backward and exotic.
The background image on the poster is made with cyanotype on fabric. This exhibition design represents the first use of NN Knit Grotesk.