A boy whose face is out of focus walks towards me. He holds a bucket and you can feel a slight spring in his steps. In the foreground, his clothing hangs over the frame and doesn’t look like an obstacle. And where did this boy come from? where is he going Why does he look happy despite being surrounded by piles of garbage and bushes? If you’ve ever lived in Lagos, Nigeria, you know that these clothes are probably school uniforms he’s just washed and spread out to dry, and his happy steps are from when he’s finished doing laundry for the day. You know. The boy, the pile of garbage, the bushes are all out of focus, and all you can really see are the clothes that make up his life.
This scene is from “Coming Close” by Rogo Olwamuyiwa, one of seven artists currently in progress. “New Photos 2023” In an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, the seething zigzags of Lagos are presented in tasteful and subtle ways throughout the show. “New Photography 2023” is the 28th installment in MoMA’s celebrated series since its opening in 1985, but the first group exhibition in the museum’s history to feature the work of living West African photographers. This shift to a more global perspective has already yielded interesting results, with the museum’s acquisition of the work of three of the exhibition’s photographers: Kelani Abbas, Abraham Ogobase and Akinbord Akinbii. I’m here. “It was a real honor to have these pieces in our collection,” he says. Ollemi C. Onabanjoan associate curator at MoMA, who has curated shows that encompass a wide range of styles and textures, colors and gestures through street photography, documentary and abstraction. Yagaji Emeji A press photo of the #EndSARS protests in Nigeria in October 2020. At this time, young people called for an end to police brutality and the dissolution of a unit known as the Special Anti-Burglar Unit.
In 2014, one year after starting activities, “Monochrome Lagos” Olwamuyiwa, who was 23 at the time, began visiting the site from a series in which his work in the show was selected. contemporary art center Lagos — an independent non-profit arts organization founded in 2007 by Nigerian curator Bishi Silva — where he discovered the work of street photographers Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand.
“They helped me feel closer,” Olwamuyiwa said by phone. “I became convinced that photography was an effective way of understanding the city.” I manage to elucidate things that only an observer can see. Moments such as “boss and assistant”, in which two men in a danfo (a ramshackle yellow minibus used for public transport) seem to whisper to each other, and the light from beneath the Third Mainland. It’s a moment like “Hazy II” when it rains. As he bridges his two figures standing in a canoe, the image takes on a misty sheen beyond its sharp surface. The grittyness is replaced by the hazy, and the personal unease of life in Lagos grows.
A Brief History of Lagos: An indigenous people inhabited by the Awori, once a military outpost of the ancient Benin kingdom and a slave-trading port for the Portuguese, who named their city after them , and eventually served as the gateway for British colonialism to Nigeria. .
Traces of these histories are largely lost today, but there are dilapidated buildings from the British colonial period and houses of Cuban-Brazilian architecture built by former slaves returning to Nigeria in the late 19th century. remains in as part of her series The Way of Life in 2015 Amanda Iheme began photographing the Casa de Fernández, one of the colonial buildings reported to have housed slaves in the 1840s. Its ownership passed from an Afro-Brazilian to an auctioneer to a Yoruba owner, converted into a bar, and then passed on to the colonial government, who declared it a monument and used it as a post office. Did. Tucked between wires from the street, with dilapidated beams and railings, the pink lustrous building that was the patina of its glory days has all but peeled away, exposing the brown bricks beneath and imminently deteriorating. continues its long march to death.
In contrast to Olwamuyiwa, and perhaps thanks to her own training as a psychotherapist, Iheme takes each frame through the jaws of slow but oblivion in soft tones, as if listening to a sound. Creates heavy and thoughtful photos as if plucked. . Ijeme literally rescued stones from the rubble of Casa de Fernández, which was demolished in 2016 without explanation from the government. Other photos show the abandoned building that once housed the Federal Ministry of Justice, including transport tickets, government “secret” files, and passports recovered from the floor of the second building.
Less directly, Akimbord Akinbiy’s photographs continue to examine the vanished history that lurks around Lagos, haunted by the ghosts of what was once a national event. A selection of photos of Bar Beach on Victoria Island from a series the 76-year-old photographer began in 1982 shows public executions of coup masterminds and armed robberies witnessed by thousands of Lagosians. It is impossible to discern , happened here. Focusing instead on the hustle and bustle that became the dreary life of his beach bar after his violent 70s, Akinbiy resisted his cameras digitally, sticking only to hand-polished lenses and sand and devised a warm black and white palette that transforms water into color. Being the same colour, it appears that a praying woman dressed in white walks from an empty chair to the edge of the frame, holding a small bible slightly raised, parting the sea with her feet. In the gallery on the second floor, the photographs are hung with something like office clips. It’s a poignant way to suggest that just as the world of Barbeach was folded when the government blocked its shores, it could easily be unwound. The public reclaimed the land and turned it into an expensive and flashy “Atlantic City.”
Although it is a photo exhibition, there is a sudden and extraordinary development, in Kelani Abbas When the lines between photography, sculpture and painting blur. Abbas transferred his 1960s photos from the family archives to a wooden letterpress case from the days when his father ran a letterpress company, and used his personal archives to create a surprisingly grassy print. It envelops history in a way that complements overgrown melancholic portraiture. Karl Ohiricollected and developed various discarded negatives from photo studios in Lagos that have closed or switched to digital photography. The installation of Abbas’s large family diary (partly in Yoruba) detailing personal philosophies, customs and traditions doesn’t look too out of place thanks to Abbas’ inconspicuous old letterpress case. (Otoshi’s “Skateboard” navigating a disabled Lagosian through a crowded street, followed by the filmmaker, this item doesn’t work so well because it’s a bit obscure.)
In the center of the gallery, Abraham Ogo-based layered manuals and digital manipulations of photographs on text (Records of the Nigerian Colonial Period) are exhibited, providing the excellent backbone of the exhibition while extending the boundaries of the medium. offers.
This impressive dance with materiality in the show will probably reach its peak. The Olwamuyiwa poster was meant to be taken home by visitors. The first thing that visitors to Lagos notice is that merchants selling similar goods flock together, as if by simply repeating the same thing to attract the attention of passers-by, and the goods being sold are easily found. It’s probably the number of roadside stalls, based on the spirit of being publicly piled up to be scattered. It’s a city where everything has to move quickly because there’s not even “time to check the time,” as Lagos calls it. The poster is an invitation to the clumsy spirit of Lagos, reflected in Olwamuyiwa’s photography. Mattresses are stacked on top of each other (“Relaxation Assistant”), minibuses are parked together (“Danfo Roof”).
‘New Photography 2023′ is a compelling case for the series’ reorientation towards a city-focused global outlook. There is harmony in the exhibition, allowing you to experiment with what a photo exhibition might look like when you embrace nuance. Using a common anchor, it shows how the seven works fit together to form a great introduction for a traveling audience. Choosing Lagos as a starting point is a curious but smart choice. Located in a country currently garnering cultural capital with its Afrobeat music and burgeoning arts scene, Lagos isn’t particularly friendly to foreigners at its blistering pace. It’s a city that requires patience, work, and courage, and maybe a little courage, to love. That’s the point of this show. Amazing art needs more effort and is worth it.
NEW PHOTOS 2023: Kelani Abbas, Akinbode Akinbiyi, Yagazi Emeji, Amanda Iheme, Abraham Ogobas, Karl Ohiri, Rogo Olwamuyiwa
Until September 16, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 11 West 53rd Street. 212-708-9400; moma.org.
