r/BobMarley

Long before reggae became part of mainstream culture in Europe, French artist Fluoman was already painting its history.

Born in 1952, Fluoman discovered reggae and the Rastafari movement in the 1970s, and it changed the direction of his life and his art. From that point on, Jamaica, Africa, Rastafari and the musicians carrying that message around the world became central to his work.

And Fluoman wasn’t simply observing the reggae movement from a distance.

He became deeply connected to it.

When major reggae artists passed through France, many visited his studio. Over the years, Fluoman met and worked around some of the most important figures of the music, creating concert posters, stage backdrops, album artwork and paintings that today have become increasingly difficult to find.

In August 1980, he even painted a mural at Bob Marley’s Tuff Gong studio in Jamaica.

Fluoman developed an unmistakable visual language using fluorescent acrylic paint. Under ordinary light, you see one painting. Turn on ultraviolet black light and another dimension appears: colors, contrasts and details hidden moments before suddenly come alive.

For Fluoman, the idea had a natural connection with reggae itself. Just as one riddim can produce countless versions, singers and mixes, one of his paintings could reveal different versions of itself depending on the light.

He eventually produced more than 600 fluorescent paintings, while his work expanded beyond reggae into Africa, Ethiopia, Pan-Africanism, the fight against apartheid and his own memories of the continent where he spent part of his childhood. He even collaborated with Thomas Sankara, one of the great symbols of Pan-Africanism.

Among the treasures preserved in Roger Steffens’ Reggae Archives is a fantastic original Culture concert poster designed by Fluoman for the Bataclan in Paris — another surviving piece of an extraordinary period when reggae, visual art and political consciousness were exploding together across Europe.

Artists like Fluoman remind us that reggae history isn’t preserved only on records and tapes.

It is also on walls, posters, album sleeves, canvases and in the work of the artists who helped give the music a visual identity.

History lives in the groove… and sometimes under a black light.