Diverse photography can help challenge perceptions and fight stereotypes. When Amanda Esther Akokhia started her photo studio some five years ago in the United Kingdom (UK), where she grew up, she was not aware just how important this was. At the time, photography was a hobby but it soon began to give her life purpose and meaning.



“When I started working, I would leave work during lunch, take pictures and return to work, and that was how I started photography. I wasn’t really fulfilled doing my job, but photography made me really happy. I knew in my heart that this is what I wanted to do [for] a living. That led me to open my first studio at 24,” says Akokhia, born in the UK but whose parents are Nigerian.



She’s the owner of Green Studio and now has over a decade of experience in the industry. Through education and the consistent drive for representation, she hopes to use her photography platform, Amanda Akokhia Photography, to bring about much-needed change.



The British Journal of Photography found that, globally, about 70% &#8211; 80% of photography students are women but they only account for 13% &#8211; 15% of professional photographers. Furthermore, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics also reportedly estimated that, although women account for half of all working photographers, they still struggle to get opportunities.



When Akokhia started cutting her teeth in the industry, she had already noticed the disparity.



“I knew I wanted to do photography, but I could not find any successful role models that looked like me in the industry to emulate,” she recalls.



This was before the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite this, she decided to fully commit – she quit her legal profession and opened her studio with £10,000 ($12,400), which she secured through a combination of savings and investment from her business partner.



“They believed in my vision and were eager to contribute,” says Akokhia.



In those days the vision for the brand was simple.



“I didn’t know what the industry was like, I just knew my dream was to shoot for big magazines and to see my pictures on billboards. I was really interested in beauty and fashion and my vision was to be a commercial photographer who shot for the big brands that I admired so much growing up. I didn’t know how I was going to get there but I knew that was what I wanted to see myself doing,” Akokhia adds.



Within two years of opening her business, Akokhia had already fulfilled her goals in photography, working with brands like BBC, Warner Brothers, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Disney and Pantene, among others.



“I started thinking [about] what the new vision for me at this stage of my life is. And I started to imagine a world where everyone would feel seen and can be seen through my work and encouraging other photographers to capture everyone. Sometimes, when you look at magazines in the UK, you only see photographers of a certain type and color. I shoot everyone as I would shoot a model for a campaign shoot,” she says.



Akokhia has steadily grown her business from one that generated a monthly revenue of £5,000 ($6,200) to one that has secured individual commercial campaigns worth £15,000 ($18,600) by elevating her business and building relationships with prominent commercial brands. An important focus for her is representation in her work, both behind the lens and in front of it.



And, as a rising creative in the sector, Akokhia hopes to achieve her new vision for creating inclusivity through training and mentorship, where she teaches future photographers and creatives how to turn their passion into a business.

Amanda Esther Akokhia started her first photo studio at the age of 24; image supplied

The UK-Based Nigerian Photographer Using A Different Lens To Challenge Norms

The scene is not picture-perfect yet, but ace photographers are slowly capturing the creative market in Ghana.



WHEN THE iconic Ghanaian photographer Emmanuel Bobbie, known widely by the moniker ‘Bob Pixel’, tragically passed away in February this year, the news sent shockwaves through the creative industry in Ghana. Bobbie had become a hero to a battery of young and upcoming Ghanaian photographers steadily following in his footsteps to build their own brands and enterprises, hoping to make it in the sector, a move exacerbated by the growing youth unemployment in the West African country. 



Bobbie was one of the pioneers and enablers of this transformation with his work celebrated both in Ghana and the world. His death reportedly attributed to Covid-19, turns the spotlight on the creative economy in Ghana. Whilst the pandemic has seen a renaissance of all things digital, it has also applied to the photography industry that now seems to be rapidly attracting a retinue of talented young men and women finding their feet in the once not-so-lucrative and unattractive sector. 



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">It becomes very difficult for a startup because unlike developed countries, where you get funding and co-funding, in Ghana, that did not exist and the systems are not right to enable you to set up. – Gilbert Asante</blockquote>
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One such beneficiary of this growth is Gilbert Asante, who has been making an impression on social media and the corporate world with his photography.



Spotting a gap in the market for quality images when he began his career many years ago as a web designer, many of Asante’s photos have gone viral and been trend-setting in Ghana. 



Some of the biggest celebrities and corporate brands have queued up to the doorsteps of Laceup Media, the bespoke production house offering services covering every sphere of advertising, from graphic design to billboards, videography and commercials. 



Asante moonlights as a creative director for the company as well as being his own photography brand. 



“When I started, photography wasn’t a big thing as it is now. So, I would design a website with my team for a restaurant and the images [will be] terrible so it [would end] up making the website [look] very tacky. So that is what pushed me to invest in a camera. I just needed some decent photos. 



“At that time, there were no top photographers. So, I said ‘why don’t I take a camera and take a picture and add this to the website’. So, after that, things became curious in terms of ‘how do I make these pictures look like what I see in international publications’,” says Asante. 



His inspiration to delve deeper into the world of conceptual photography came about after a brief visit to the art centres of Japan. When he returned to Ghana, Asante knew he had found his calling. A self-taught photographer, he is now a name in the industry for his glamorous fashion shoots and out-of-the-box creative direction. But his success has been no walk in the park.



“The biggest issue I have is not based on photography but based on setting up a business in Ghana generally and that really cuts across all the sectors. It becomes very difficult for a startup because unlike developed countries, where you get funding and co-funding, in Ghana, that did not exist and the systems are not right to enable you to set up,” says Asante. 



While he was busy contending with these institutional issues, Elorm Ayayee pursued a career as a multilingual translator elsewhere. Fluent in French and Spanish, today, the founder of Elorm Ayayee Portraiture, a legacy portrait photography business in Ghana, was desperately searching for a career where she could make the most impact in the lives of people. 



“I was at a point in my career that I wasn’t making a contribution and I had worked myself into a system and at the core, I was against that. I don’t like being in a box or a cog in the wheel,” recalls Ayayee. 



Being a creative at heart, Ayayee went into publishing and worked as a ghostwriter for clients amongst many other things. 



“Photography was never on the horizon and never something I had considered… I came back to Ghana and was working with a company that did medical and surgical systems and I got married and had kids and then I realized that I had to make the call and I couldn’t have it all. I had to decide between my career and who I wanted to be as a family woman.” 



She made the tough decision to quit her career. 



“At that point, I had not been idle or jobless for over 20 years. I was always on the go and handling multiple things. I suddenly found myself with nothing to do. So, I took a trip to see my mum. One day, she had a program she had to go to and needed a photo of herself. It was the weekend and no one could do it and so she gave me my dad’s camera and I took a photo of her and until today, she says it is one of the best photos of her life.”



And just like that, Ayayee got hooked on photography. The Elorm Ayayee brand has been able to emerge as one of the top photography outlets in Ghana. Her popularity grew with time due to her ability to take captivating images of women, especially older women. 



“I immediately hooked on to what I thought my personal contribution would be. And that was birthed [by] seeing how my mother’s photo of herself impacted her and the other people and I said ‘this is my motivating factor’; seeing the way a woman sees herself when she looks at a photograph was amazing.” 



Both Ayayee and Asante are living proof of how lucrative the photography industry can be. But there is still a long way to go for upcoming talent. 



“A lot of people don’t see the business aspect of photography. There is so much big business from it and a lot of people don’t understand that and that is why they see photography as some job that is not going to give you so much security,” says Asante. 



For Ayayee, she knew the key to winning was to zone in on a specific demographic. 



“I was very clear about what I wanted to do. My niche was established when I started. I started out photographing women and I only took images of women above 50. And that kept me busy because I was offering a service that at the time didn’t really exist. I was very resolute about what type of images I wanted and my target audience,” says Ayayee. 



For Asante, on the other hand, the lack of any institutional investment meant he had to find other means to launch his business. 



“Laceup was started with about $4,000 which was money my partner and I put in at that time to purchase a few things. This was money I had saved from my previous work as a web designer. And my partner fielded the other half of it. It wasn’t that much in the beginning and we decided to build on that and make a lot of sacrifices in terms of the income coming in and how we could put it back in the business and make the company bigger. That is what helped us grow to the level we are now,” says Asante. 



Both Ayayee and Asante charge anywhere from $1,000 upwards depending on the packages they offer. 



“I didn’t start to be priced affordably because I was a mother of three and I had a limited amount of time. I felt like I had a very unparalleled skill-set which I translated into the cost I wished to receive for my work,” says Ayayee. 



The biggest hurdle in the photography business, according to Asante, is access to quality equipment. 



“All the equipment we use is imported. Every single one of them; even the backdrop paper we use for photography and that is difficult. We don’t even have servicing companies here so if cameras or equipment break down, you have to send it back to the UK and that was one of the biggest challenges we had in the beginning.” 



These are just some of the early-stage lessons they can impart to younger aspirants in the country. Zion Market Research estimated the global demand for digital photography at around $77.6 billion in 2015, projected to reach $110.8 billion by this year, and with so many young starry-eyed hopefuls still looking to make ends meet in Ghana, at least they have emerging role models who have looked through a more creative lens and proven that clicks can convert to cash.

Elom

Ghanaian Photographers On How Their Creative Businesses Click

No one can talk about photography legends without mentioning the world-renowned South African photographer Santu Mofokeng. Born in 1956, Mofokeng fought apartheid with his lens as part of the Afrapix collective.
An important critic of mainstream photojournalism, Mofokeng has inspired many photographers, young and old, including 26-year-old South African photographer, Lebohang Kganye.
“While I was studying photography at the Market Photo Workshop, in Johannesburg, I was introduced to the black and white photographs of Santu Mofokeng. I remember being drawn to the series Chasing Shadows about spirituality. It spoke quite personally to me, this search for something greater, not just a higher being, but a ‘call’,” says Kganye.
Even though Mofokeng’s photographs record the performance of rituals, with an intangible, unearthly presence, Kganye says Mofokeng also explores fictional and poetic musings.
Kganye began her photography studies in 2009 and is currently studying Fine Arts at the University of Johannesburg.
“I first met Mofokeng in 2012, when I received the Tierney Fellowship award at the Market Photo Workshop. It was the beginning of winter and the two of us stood outside in the cold for hours talking about photography,” says Kganye.
After refusing to look at her photographs, Mofokeng insisted he needed to understand what informed Kganye’s work.
“I remember I just wanted him to critique my work and again he refused, saying I needed to realize my voice first and we carried on in conversation a few more hours,” says Kganye.
About a year later, Kganye revisited Mofokeng’s series The Black Photo Album/ Look at Me: 1890-1950, when she was working on her project Ke Lefa Laka. Similarly, Kganye was working on her family photo albums and she says she was fascinated with how Mofokeng’s work has tensions and overlaps between personal narratives, memory, collective history and the present.
“He helped me understand that family albums are a significant part of our family histories and the photographs are more than documentation of personal narratives. The family album is composed of a selection of what shall be remembered, what is not forgotten, therefore our histories become orchestrated fictions and imagined histories,” says Kganye.
She says Mofokeng’s work creates a space where the past and the present converge to create alternative versions of history and memory, often exposing the complexities of memory, the personal and collective.
“I find myself often paging through Mofokeng’s publications for a sentence or an image that could evoke something in me, his style and writings have inspired much of my work.”

Inspiration coming in from The cold

Sixty one years ago, Peter Magubane took his first picture. It was another world in 1954, most of Southern Africa wasn’t free. South Africa was under the heel of JG Strijdom and apartheid divided the country. This was the uncertain and unequal world 22-year-old Magubane was thrown into with a camera around his neck.
Magubane was born in Vrededorp and raised in the multicultural suburb of Sophiatown, Johannesburg. He worked for DRUM; the magazine in everyone’s home.
”I began to read DRUM magazine, who were writing about social issues that affected black people in South Africa, then I said this is a magazine I want to work for,” says Magubane.
He was employed as a driver and given a camera by DRUM editor Thomas Hopkinson. He worked alongside other greats, like photographer Bob Gosani and chief photographer Jurgen Schadeberg. He looked through the lens and never looked back.
Magubane recalls going outside the country and documenting poverty in Africa.
“Someone wanted to stop me and I said ‘no, I am here to document, this is the truth of what is happening. Let my camera eat, it is hungry,’” he says
Magubane told the story to his inheritors, more than 100 students, young professionals and media houses at the Market Photo Workshop gallery in downtown Johannesburg. It was tough in his day as a photojournalist. Police kept him in solitary confinement for 586 days for taking pictures and sending them out of South Africa.
“I was arrested for doing my job,” he says.
He was so passionate about photography he remembers saying to himself that when he got out, he was going out with his camera again. Soon after Magubane was released, he was banned for five years and couldn’t work as a photographer. That wasn’t going to stop him.
Magubane used to dodge through back doors to take pictures and return under the cover of darkness. One night he came back to find his house on fire. He recalls looking at his house and saying: “damn, they’re fighting back.”
Magubane was quick, he had to be. One day he was sent to Zeerust, a small town in the North West province, to cover a trial ringed by the police. He knew before he left Johannesburg that he wasn’t welcome.
“I went to the nearest shop and bought myself a half loaf of bread, I scooped the inside of the bread, I put my camera in there and I walked around eating my bread taking pictures. The police were so dumb that I had this bread the whole day, and when I was through with that I went and bought myself a pint of milk, I threw the milk out and put my camera inside and I continued taking pictures,” he says.
Magubane used a Leica M3 camera, small enough to hide inside a loaf of bread, a box of milk or a bible. One of his undercover assignments was to photograph mineworkers. He went in with a dust coat, the camera underneath.
“I walked in there, I saw what was going on. Men were stripped naked, being examined. There was no need for them to be stripped, whatsoever. And I took my pictures, I shocked the entire South Africa with those pictures, because no one had ever gone into the mines and taken those pictures, but this son of Magubane did, because I was not afraid.”
Magubane spent years photographing during apartheid, and got caught up in it: the Treason Trial, where he was arrested in 1956 and released after four days; the Women’s March in 1956 on the Union Building in Pretoria for the abolition of passes for women, the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 where 69 people were killed and over 200 injured, the 1976 Soweto Uprising, right up to the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990. Magubane became his personal photographer.
Post 1994, after all the blood and violence, Magubane took his camera to capture the beauty of South Africa, the colorful side that the world didn’t know.
He exhibited work internationally in the United States and Germany and also featured in National Geographic, The Times in London and LIFE magazine.
“My editor told me to never allow yourself to be told what to take and what not to take. And I was prepared to break the apartheid rules with all my might and I’m glad that I did. When I sit at home going through my pictures, I say ‘yes, son of Magubane, you have done justice to this country, you have done justice to yourself.’”

Fear, Truth And Daring In The Land Of Bread, milk  And CUNNING

It was the dangerous days leading up to South Africa’s first democratic elections on April 27, 1994. Jodi Bieber, a newspaper rookie photographer, was sent on assignment to cut her teeth in a violent Ulundi, in KwaZulu-Natal, a warzone for the African National Congress and Inkatha Freedom Party.
“I definitely knew I was not the war photographer because we witnessed quite a few violent situations in Ulundi. At one time we slept on the floor of our hotel, we thought we might be assassinated,” says Bieber, then freelance photographer at The Star, in Johannesburg.
In KwaZulu-Natal, Bieber suffered rough times documenting the tragic tale of the dead and wounded on the painful path to democracy.
“When I was not freelancing for the newspaper, I created bodies of work about different subjects; one of my first projects was the crime prevention unit in Hillbrow. I spent six months with police who worked undercover,” she says.
Right from the early days, Bieber and her camera tempted fate. She survived to win the prestigious World Press Photo of the year in 2010, for the photograph of a violated young woman in a refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan.
The picture spoke a thousand horrifying words. It captured the 18-year-old Bibi Aisha who was dragged by her angry in-laws to a mountain where her Taliban soldier husband cut off her nose and ears. She was left for dead as punishment for running from her marriage to escape years of abuse. Aisha survived and ended up in the refugee camp where Bieber found her in 2010.
“It took the photograph in a very plain room. When I created the picture I asked Bibi through an interpreter to close her eyes and think about her inner beauty and her inner power and look at me. She did that and I took the photo. That’s the photograph they used. But I was very worried because I took her very empowered photograph. I thought I had failed because TIME would want something more vulnerable. TIME said it was the most iconic photograph they had seen. And it went on to win the award. For one year I traveled to about 20 countries and I gave talks to universities. I was in front of the cameras for the first time,” says Bieber.
Bieber’s photograph changed Aisha’s life. In August 2010, TIME magazine ran it on the cover. A family in the United States read the story and adopted Aisha and the Grossman Burn Foundation is paying for a reconstructive surgery on her nose.
“When I choose projects, it’s because I identify with the subject. Because I identify, I relate to it, that’s really why I want to do it. Hopefully through what I do I am also learning something from it. Yes, the aesthetic for me is as important as the content, definitely. I like to touch on the subjects that have some relevance to me,” says Bieber.
When FORBES AFRICA met Bieber in late November, she was going on a two-week assignment to Papua New Guinea to photograph women and children scarred by violence. Doctors Without Borders commissioned this project. A week earlier, South African National Gallery had closed an exhibition of her work called Between Darkness and Light; what she calls a mid-career retrospective. It ran for three months.
Bieber says she creates relationships within the communities, because there’s always an element of danger.
“For me, people are people even if they are criminals, if they know you they won’t touch you, they won’t try to hurt you. I went to Iraq but I never felt fearful but you always know that something might happen. But when I was attacked, I was photographing outside a restaurant in Cape Town. So you never know when you could be attacked. Life is not as predictable. That’s why my book is called Between Dogs and Wolves, a title from French phrase entre les chiens et loups,” says Bieber.
Work is a world away from where Bieber was born in 1966, in Hillbrow, central Johannesburg. She grew up in segregated South Africa and went to all-white schools. The system fostered rebellion in her soul.
“I don’t think art was embraced when I was growing up but I used to question things. I had a history teacher I am friends with now. He opened our eyes to what was happening in South Africa at the time. Remember in 1976 was when we first got television. It was a completely different time, but I remember seeing those yellow nyalas [a military vehicle], I knew something was not right in our society. So, I was very rebellious at high school. I had an opinion and I had a voice, I was not just following the crowd,” she says.
In 1993, aged 23, Bieber took a part-time course at Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg – the training ground for many successful African photographers – while she worked as a media planner for an advertising agency in Sandton, north of Johannesburg. After the course, Bieber left her job for a three-month trainee post at The Star. In 1996, she was one of 12 young world photographers selected for a week’s training in a World Press Masterclass in Rotterdam, Holland. This led to myriad awards at home and internationally.
Bieber’s expeditions are recorded in books: Real Beauty; which challenges stereotypes of beauty in South Africa, Soweto; about ordinary life in South Africa’s biggest township and Between Dogs And Wolves: Growing Up With South Africa, which documents the country for over a decade.
“All my work deals with issues relating to broader society and lots of it challenges the stereotypes that exist in the media,” says Bieber.
For two decades, Bieber’s work changed lives around the world and she vows to document the injustices. Her camera and her soul agree.

Jodi-main

The Restless Rebellious Soul Behind The Lens

On a balmy Johannesburg morning, we meet South African photographer and activist Zanele Muholi at the Stevenson Studios in Braamfontein, a colorful cultural hub north of the city. Here, we are surrounded by her collection of self-portraits. Everywhere you look is Muholi, each image stark in mood and meaning.
You turn to the real Muholi – the award-winning photographer known for her work exploring gender, race and sexuality – in flesh and blood, lost in thought, just like her portraits.
Incidentally, blood has been a prevailing topic in some of Muholi’s works.
For her collection, Visual Sexuality: Only Half the Picture, she photographed herself in front of the mirror, portraying her first experience of puberty, trying to figure out what it meant to be a woman. Understandably, it was a difficult shoot.
“It was perceived as taboo to talk about periods, whereas people could easily speak about rape and other issues affecting women,” says Muholi.
“Before I am anything in the world, I am a woman.”
The last of five children, Muholi, 43, was only a few months old when her father died. Born and schooled in Durban in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, those initial years were difficult.
Muholi earned her first salary at a factory producing linen in KwaZulu-Natal. Destiny tempted her in the form of a camera. She left the factory job hoping to bus it to the city of Johannesburg to study film and videography at the Film and Allied Workers Organization.
<div id="attachment_31550" style="width: 899px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31550" class="wp-image-31550 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Somnyama-Ngonyama-II-Oslo-2015-1-889x1024.jpg" alt="" width="889" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Somnyama-Ngonyama-II-Oslo-2015-1.jpg 889w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Somnyama-Ngonyama-II-Oslo-2015-1-300x346.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Somnyama-Ngonyama-II-Oslo-2015-1-600x691.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Somnyama-Ngonyama-II-Oslo-2015-1-260x300.jpg 260w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Somnyama-Ngonyama-II-Oslo-2015-1-768x885.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 889px) 100vw, 889px" />Somnyama-Ngonyama-II</div>
Unfortunately, her interview was unsuccessful and she wasn’t admitted to the program.
She ended up braiding hair at her tiny flat in Century Plaza, Johannesburg, to make ends meet. She realized she was quite creative at it.
But braid after braid, she was getting closer to her dream.
In 2003, she completed an Advanced Photography course at the famed Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg, only three kilometers from the Stevenson Studios, where she now displays her self-portraits. In Newtown, she held a camera for the first time.
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“I have always wanted to tell human stories like lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex [stories]. I noticed there was a lack of visual material that spoke to our needs and I wanted to capture that,” says Muholi.
In 2009, she completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in documentary media at Ryerson University in Toronto.
One of her portraits, Hlengiwe (pictured below) is a tell-all on hate crime and discrimination.
“It refers to the number of cases that I have heard, especially from hate crime victims and survivors who didn’t have the courage to report it to the police because they were going to lose it [the case] anyway. As much as it’s a beautiful image, it’s one of those painful and exhausting stories,” says Muholi.
Passionate about “visual history” and women, Muholi says photography is her life. And she has always wondered why there were few female photographers – especially in history.
“There were so many historic moments and stories around us, but I didn’t see any woman capturing those` moments… I asked myself why women are not drawn to this career. If we could have female bus drivers, why would it be difficult for women to carry cameras? I mean a camera is not too heavy,” says Muholi.
In 2012, she faced a serious setback in her career when intruders broke into her flat in Cape Town and made off with her hard drives containing five years of unpublished photographic work. She believes it was sabotage.
<div id="attachment_31549" style="width: 693px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31549" class="wp-image-31549 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Somnyama-I-Paris-2014-1-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="683" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Somnyama-I-Paris-2014-1.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Somnyama-I-Paris-2014-1-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Somnyama-I-Paris-2014-1-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Somnyama-I-Paris-2014-1-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Somnyama-I-Paris-2014-1-768x1152.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" />Somnyama-I-Paris-2</div>
“Those people knew what they were doing, they’re were trying to slow me down,” she says.
Calling herself the first black lesbian to tell her life stories through a series of black and white self- portraits, the highlight of her career she says was displaying these portraits at a solo exhibition in Brooklyn, New York, in 2015.
“I felt I had arrived, I couldn’t slow down and that only death would stop me from doing what I love,” she says.
“One thing that people don’t know about me, I cry a lot and get really frustrated when I cannot be creative. So, I guess photography makes me happy.”
Currently busy with a new collection of photographs, Somnyama Ngonyama, meaning ‘hail, the dark lioness’, she has four published books and hopes to have at least 10 publications under her belt by 2020. And she wants to leave a legacy, like some of South Africa’s icons.
“I want to leave a mark just like the legendary Brenda Fassie and Miriam Makeba did with their music,” she says.
Life taught her resilience. Photography taught her about connecting. With the world. And herself.

Ndivile-II-Malmo-2014-9924-1

‘Only Death Would  Stop Me’

It’s not easy to be a photographer, not when your father is a high court judge and there are four lawyers and two doctors in the family. Photographer Kelechi Amadi-Obi has made peace with the fact that he’s a bit of a black sheep in the family. And looking back, his family should have known all along that he was going to be an artist.
Growing up in the eastern region of Nigeria, in the city of Umuahia, he quickly developed a passion for drawing.
“It all started with reading comics and drawing Spiderman and The Incredible Hulk. I realized that I had talent with visual arts and I started to draw. My drawings earned me respect among my peers,” says Amadi-Obi.
With the encouragement of those around him, he was spurred on to improve his skills. Unfortunately in the neighborhood where he grew up, there were no museums, art schools or galleries where he could hone his skills.
“I would go to the local library to do research on drawing. The more I read and practised, the better I got and the quicker I improved,” he says.
<div id="attachment_1623" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1623" class="size-medium wp-image-1623" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/supplied-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" />Amadi -Obi dressed as a barrister</div>
Even with his passion for drawing and the visual arts, his family put his career choices down to law or medicine. Amadi-Obi chose law and duly enrolled at university. Ironically though university exposed him to art in a way he had never encountered before.
“When I got to university I realized there was an active art scene there. I naturally gravitated towards artists,” he says.
The law student became the talk of his campus as his artwork surpassed that of the art students. Yet he kept hitting the law books and graduated to take up a job as barrister. He only wore his gown and wig for one year after being called to the bar.
“After my one year of service I started working at an art studio, where I exhibited my art and became a successful exhibiting artist. Photography came gradually. I used to make photos as a reference material for my paintings. I started making paintings of human forms and took photos of models in my studio with light coming from my window,” says the painter-cum-photographer.
“I learnt to use a camera and learnt to capture light in a very intricate and delicate way to achieve my purpose. The photographs themselves became artworks. I started associating with other photographers too. Once I finished taking images I would go to the darkroom to print my photos. I looked at the darkroom process and it looked very similar to my painting process, only it had quicker results,” he says.
His decision to settle in Lagos shaped his career forever. The city has not attracted many photographers but it has certainly attracted those with an eye for drama. The city exposed him to spectacular sites including the picturesque lagoons of the region, which span over 635 kilometers and cut across the southern part of the metropolis, linking the Atlantic Ocean and Lekki lagoon. But it wasn’t just the beauty of the lagoons, which attract so many artists that inspired Amadi-Obi. He also saw inspiration in the sprawling fishing slums that draw together the huge influx of people migrating to the region.
His photographic career took off in 2001, when a German friend invited him to exhibit at the Rencontres De Bamako or “African Photography Biennale”. Since the exhibition’s inception in 1994, it has caught the attention of jet-setting curators, critics and dealers. It has also popularized African photographers such as Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé.
Soon after he was invited to Milan to showcase the collection he exhibited at the Biennale. But while Rencontres De Bamako has opened doors for many African photographers, it has also been a source of controversy.
“Some of the reasons for this controversy are familiar and echo long-standing issues in the presentation of African art to Euro-American audiences,” write Jennifer Bajorek and Erin Haney, who are independent curators.
They claim that such exhibitions perpetuate asymmetries of power and leave young artists and organizers feeling alienated from their work. To overcome these challenges artists are forming new alliances and building their own networks, which are not remote-controlled by the West.
Amadi-Obi is no exception. After his exhibition in Milan he established a career in Nigeria in collaboration with other upcoming photographers. Depth of Field, set up in 2001, is the brainchild of Amadi-Obi and five other photographers: Uchechukwu James Iroha, Toyosi Odunsi, Amaize Ojeikere, Emeka Okereke and Toyin Sokefun. This artist collective was formed to deepen the conversation among the photographers and aims to attract local audiences to their work. They critique each other’s work and share resources including a library, publicity platforms and web visibility.
The ace photographer’s online portfolio is stacked with fashion photos he took before he was commissioned to such a shoot.
“I wanted to shoot fashion but there were no fashion magazines. Still I would call models and take pictures of them like the ones I would see in Vogue Magazine. So I was making a portfolio with no clients.
“When someone in Nigeria bought the South African franchise of True Love magazine [to the country], they needed a photographer and someone recommended me,” says Amadi-Obi.
His work with True Love earned him recognition among mushrooming corporates looking to improve their image with slick photographs in company brochures, annual reports and on their websites. With commissions from companies such as Guinness, MTN, British American Tobacco, the Ford Foundation, Prima Garnet Ogilvy, Insight Grey, Flour Mills of Nigeria and Orange Drugs, his career is on the up.
His passion for photography has made Amadi-Obi a household name in Lagos. To be a successful photographer does not require extraordinary equipment, he believes. When he started his career he used a Mamiya RB67 film camera. Today, most of his images are taken with several professional lenses but he’s hooked on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II body.
“I am not particular with equipment. There was a time when I used to be crazy about cameras but I got tired because they keep changing… To get a good image you just need to have a good eye,” says Amadi-Obi.

Tag: Photographer

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