A bold new generation of Nigerian photographers is emerging to capture the changes and challenges sweeping across the country. From hard-hitting photojournalism in the Niger Delta to subversive fashion photography, take a look at the photographers shaping Nigeria’s thriving visual culture. 

Adeola Olagunju

Adeola Olagunju is a rising photographer who lives and works in Lagos. Developing the art of the performative self-portrait, her series Resurgence: A Manifesto looks both inwards and outwards to construct a sense of identity as a means of resistance. In bold black and white, her images speak volumes as they stage the photographer’s attempt to break free from ‘mental shackles.’ Interested in what the body communicates outside of our conscious thoughts, her latest project, Paths and Patterns, explores feet as maps of journeys and experience, testing the boundary between pre-determined routes and the freedom to wander. Her work has been exhibited at Lagos Photo and she won the Young Artfund Amsterdam Award for 2013.

George Osodi

George Osodi is an internationally acclaimed photojournalist whose daring and honest images have changed the face of Nigerian photography. Returning to his home in the Niger Delta, Osodi spent four years capturing the environmental degradation of the region caused by multi-national oil firms. Culminating in the momentous book Niger Delta – Rape of Paradise, the photographs offer an almost apocalyptic vision, with human forms foregrounded against a backdrop of rising flames and thick clouds of smoke, creating a powerful sense of urgency in the face of such carnage. More recently, Osodi has turned his focus to the urgency of documenting and archiving traditional Nigerian culture. His Nigerian Monarchs series captures the ‘visual drama’ of the diverse traditional cultures enshrined in these royal structures that, though stripped of constitutional powers in the 1960s, point to the deep roots of Nigeria’s pre-colonial past.

Aisha Augie-Kuta

In 2011, Aisha Augie-Kuta won the Future Award for Creative Artist of the Year for her Faces of Africa portrait series, a collection of portraits of female faces elaborately painted to re-enact the vibrant patterns of the Surma Tribe of Ethiopia. Based in Abuja, Augie-Kuta’s experience as a mixed-race, mixed-tribe woman is a dynamic source of inspiration, enabling the artist to explore gender and identity in complex ways, using juxtaposition to play with the idea that every story has two sides. Her latest project offers the viewer a glimpse of the unseen side of the Fulani mudhuts in Abuja, which, from the outside, appear to blend into the landscape. However, shot on a wide lens, Augie-Kuta’s striking photographs reveal an unexpected interior world of colour. 

 

Ade Adekola

Conceptual photographer Ade Adekola creates visual representations that go beyond what the eye can see. His ground-breaking work, Icons of a Metropolis, captures the dynamism of urban life, re-imagining figures on the street as 20 character archetypes, ‘icons’, conceived to define the spirit of survival that fuels life in Lagos. The use of solarisation heightens the sense of energy in his images by giving the figures a surreal glow. Including ‘the cart pusher,’ ‘the beggar,’ ‘the street hawker,’ ‘the opportunist’ and the ‘prayer warrior,’ Adekola transforms the familiar but overlooked faces of the Lagos landscape into visual memes, faces that recur in cities across the world. He has recently extended Icons of a Metropolis into a new project, Ethnoscapes – Icons as Transplants, superimposing scenes from Lagos onto backgrounds of American, Asian and European cities to explore questions of exploring globalisation and identity.

Andrew Esiebo 

A visual storyteller, Andrew Esiebo captures scenes from everyday life in the urban landscape, exploring how personal narratives interact with wider social issues. Interrogating themes such as sexuality, football, gender politics and migration, his work blends the personal with the political. His recent project, Pride, explores scenes in barbershops across West Africa, offering a glimpse of the animated spots where men of different social classes sit side by side for this social ritual. The Everyday Africa project saw Esiebo embrace the immediate potential of Instagram to capture everyday moments that circumvent the conventional portrayal of life in Africa with images that are subtle, intimate and refreshing. Esiebo’s work has been exhibited at LagosPhoto Festival, African Photography Encounters in Mali, and the Havana and Sao Paolo biennales.

Yetunde Ayeni-Babaeko 

 

After spending most of her childhood in Germany, a trip back to Nigeria inspired Yetunde Ayeni-Babaeko’s fascination with traditional Yoruba culture. Since returning to live and work in Lagos as an adult, her photographs reflect the mythology and storytelling tradition of the Yoruba people. Captivated by the word ‘Itan’ which means ‘story’ in Yoruba, Ayeni-Babaeko based an entire collection around the concept, capturing female figures in mystical costumes to recreate the Nigerian deities and folk-stories in the eyes of the viewer. Women are the custodians of tradition for Ayeni-Babeko, who uses black and white photography to capture the timelessness of her goddesses. She currently runs Camara Studios in Lagos and has turned her lens to using art as a change agent, in particular using photography to document and educate women on breast cancer.

Source: THECULTURETRIP