To bring myself closer to the experiential scope of pairing photography and writing, I’m sharing this excerpt from my essay ‘Lagos, Their Lagos,’ published in @afapinen .. it’s a close-in on the photographs of Akinbode Akinbiyi, whose eye of Lagos suggests an intimacy many miss on early inspections
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A lot of information, a lot of crisscrossed wires. The image is one of activity. High-rise buildings on either side of the frame, their windows and balconies visible after some contemplation. It’s a scene of ordinariness. There are people in the frame but objects are the most consequential features: poles, zinc, a shop’s torn covering. A girl crying, or is she laughing? Her hair swirls, intense emotion on her face, dark as most parts of the photograph are. She is a collector of longing.
Six Songs, Swirling Gracefully in the Taut Air is Akinbode’s project collecting photographs from over four decades. An exhibition in Berlin demonstrated the evolution of his gaze which, put together, reveals a collectivity in the places he pictures. In one photograph bold letterings are juxtaposed with quiet, huge buildings in the background; in another, the top of a small cluster of houses are paired with the dominant image of a hippie-dressed, middle-aged man, his sensibilities visibly American.
Lagos appears in white, as a group of women in garments, the outline of a palm tree suggesting their presence at a beach, a favoured location for inspired prayers. A boy turning backwards and the woman holding a candle: they are immediately arresting. The boy’s appeal arises from his disinterest, the woman’s for the exact opposite. From Akinbode’s angle the candle becomes a microphone; a doubling of representation evokes prayer and politics. The image contradicts itself.
There is this cave
In the air behind my body
That nobody is going to touch:
A cloister, a silence
Closing around a blossom of fire.
When I stand upright in the wind,
My bones turn to dark emeralds.
~ James Wright
The wide grey cloud of sky
the smoke—drab world of after—rain
And this one burst of sun
shafting down to turn my private world
to crystal and to flame.
Such joy—sudden—bright as a flag unfurled
I never thought to see again
after our love was done.
But see, but see
There are still other worlds
than our special private buried world.
~ Dennis Brutus
Hand, said I, since now we part
From fields and men we know by heart,
For strangers’ faces, strangers’ lands, -
Hand, you have held true fellows’ hands.
Be clean then; rot before you do
A thing they’d not believe of you.
~ A.E. Housman
I see you at the end of your tether sometimes,
In the milking parlour, holding yourself up
Between two cows until your turn goes past,
Then coming to the smell of dung again
and wondering, is this all? As it was
In the beginning, is now and shall be?
Then rubbing your eyes and seeing our old brush
Up on the byre door, and keeping going.
~ Seamus Heaney
At the just concluded edition of Umuofia Arts and Books Festival, we had four critics, Chimezie Chika, Njoku Nonso, Evidence Egwuono and Emmanuel Esomnofu at the panel to discuss Criticism and contemporary Nigerian art. The topic of criticism has been a recurring and important one in the Nigerian literary scene. All four critics agreed that more should be done. In time more of the clips will be made available to the audience. However some of the observations of the panelists stayed with us.
1) Evidence Egwuono: “We often think literary criticism is all about condemnation, but criticism often involves and unbiased assessment of the art.” She further observed that the ecosystem in Nigeria doesn’t support criticism.
2) Njoku Nonso succinctly put it that “Imagination must be subject to interrogation and that is where editing comes in.” For Nonso, the art of editing itself which is fundamental to the production of the art is itself an art of criticism.
3) Chimezie Chika: Chika unarguably Nigeria’s most active and excellent critic in the past three years, argues that the quality of Nigerian writing on the global scale leaves a lot to be desired, and that it could benefit from a bit of criticism, and the resistance to criticism is a disservice to the art.”
#umuofiaartsandbooksfestival2025
bristle grass, seconds distance away from skin
tenderloin, supple & strong, swing here, there
in time, you get tired & say the game was good
there was a time when I believed you
~ Ichiban
Panel session: Specialized Technology Models and Advancement of Media in Igbo Land.
Moderated by @chiedoziem_chukwudera , featuring @mayorofnnewi and @e.esomnofu .
#Writerscommunity #Umofiabookfest #Umuofiaartsandbooksfestival
