While he’s gained quite a following for his arresting images of street style in South Africa, Johannesburg based photographer Anthony Bila’s works often take a deeper look as at the street as a place where ideas or exchanged and created — as a place of protest and demonstration, where most of history has taken place. In his Black History March series Bila draws on iconic images of revolution to create contemporary images that pay homage to the past. When asked about his series in Africa is a Country, the artist had this to say,

The Black History March series is project close to my heart in that it was and is inspired by African history particularly and the absurdity that the history of Africa and its diaspora should be commemorated one month every year. Thus, the idea was for me to purposefully launch this project every year succeeding or preceding “Black History Month” in February. I wanted to dispel the notion that Black History needs a ‘special month’, the shortest month of all no less, dedicated to it as commemoration and remembrance of the incredibly vast history of Africa and it’s peoples.

I wanted to reference a bygone time, not specific to a place and time necessarily, but to a feeling. We’re now more than ever bombarded with images of a “new black” and I wanted to remind many of my contemporaries of what has come before them. I plan to go deeper and further into Black History with the next installment and continue to surprise anyone I’m privileged to reach with my work. African History as vast as the ocean and what I’ve touched on is but a drop.

For more images, go here.