Ganiyu Jimoh PhD.

Department of Creative Arts

University of Lagos

jimgaconcept@yahoo.com

From the prehistoric epoch through iron age to the contemporary times, art has been employed as means of concretising, interrogating and documenting realities. Art plays significant role in understanding what transpired in ancient civilisations such as the Nok, Ife, Benin, and Ashanti among others. It has overtime become tools of reinforcing identity, heritage and means of re-presenting societal ideals. In the discourse of ownership and identities, the past played significant role in interrogating the present. This could not have been possible without tangible means of documentation. In fact, written text as a form documentation evolved from Neolithic men’s attempt at documenting the world around them in minimalistic pictogram like hieroglyphs in ancient Egypt and Nsibidi in precolonial Nigeria. Visual form of documentation is one of enduring sources of history across the world.

Engaging photographs – archival and contemporary, as integral part of this project, which also includes intellectual discourse, opens a vista through which new knowledges could be produced. Photographs as sources for African history have gained more scholarly interest since the pioneering workshop at the School for Oriental and African Studies in May 1988 by Andrew Roberts and David Killingray (Gordon and Kurzwelly, 2018). Photographs have been used in many ways and with changing intentions. They have “enlarged parochial perspectives and have impelled action to preserve unique natural phenomenon and cherished cultural artifacts” (Rosenblum, 2019:10)

 Several theories have been postulated for deconstructing photographs as historical texts. The most relevant perspectives in analysing the accompanying exhibits are post-positivists and social constructionists paradigms. Post-positivists is a perspective which sees photographs as a direct objective representation of external reality and reduces the role of the photographer as a mere technician while social constructionists paradigms, examines photographic images as “symbolic texts and demanding semiotic interpretations to determine meaning” (Gordon and Kurzwelly, 2018:7).

Archival images in the exhibition by Olasupo Shasore, LASRAB and Oludamola Adebowale are not intended to be appreciated from aesthetic point of view, though some of them might have served that purpose at the point of creation mostly in the colonial era, however, their archival context has transcended the l’art pour l’art  – art for art’s sake – purpose to being snapshots bearing witness to historical debates and counter-arguments. On this premise, it is important to examine the intertexuality of their presentations with the maps, newspaper cutouts, posters, post cards etc. In this context what is presented as historical photographs are as important as what is omitted as omission could be a deliberate and strategic erasure of historical fact. However, interrogating visual exhibits against the backdrop of intellectual discourse as carried out in this project establishes a path through which the research’s assumptions could be tested. Other works in the exhibition by contemporary professional and amateur photographers captured the essence of Lagos and various challenges sprinkling her aquatic splendor. They have employed diverse social cultural symbols as metaphor in interrogating the notion of ownership and identity. One of the works to behold is J.D. Ojeikere’s photograph of the Cathedral Church of Christ at Marina, Lagos. Completed in 1945, the Church holds the relics of Rev Dr. Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first African bishop in Anglican Church. Here in J.D. Ojeikere’s frame, it is titled “The Cathedral”, captured in 1965 and his son’s photograph of the same subject taken forty-three years apart (2008) titled “The Source III”. These two images reveal the evolving spirit of Lagos as they engaged in dialogue with one another. Their conversations must have included witnessing a civil war (1967), five coup d’états (Jan 1966, July 1966, 1976, 1983 and 1987), federal character structure etc. – all which played significant role in rekindling the consciousness of who actually owns Lagos? J.D. Ojeikere’s image revealed a more serene, organised, nature-friendly, “monochrome” Lagos while Amaize Ojeikere’s amplifies a “multi-coloured” Lagos, struggling to cope with cosmopolitan burden. As explicit as these two related but distant images seem to be about depiction of population explosion which resulted into competition for resources and in turn aggravated the call for ownership and identity, it is not out of place to be curious to know if the ensuing interpretations and meanings are not imposed on the photographs by the artists as they could suggest a totally different meanings if taken at a different time of the day or a particular day of the week.  However, examining the images as a frame in the reel of all exhibits revealed that the contest for space and resources orchestrated by different factors of cosmopolitanism and the need for the “atohun rinwa”- the foreigners to claim ownership as rite of passage became necessary for their survival. Deji Akinpelu’s oeuvre focuses on the destruction of Otodo-Gbame and Abule Glass communities by the state government under the guise of constructing a befitting housing estate for the inhabitants. Most of these destructions and eventual gentrification never saw the original inhabitants returning to their space. They are always displaced and rendered impoverished. Akinpelu’s works provoke discourse on the concept of ownership and identity as an exclusive right of the affluent in Lagos. The people of Otodo-Gbame claim to have ancestral lineage with Lagos and have occupied this space for over 100 years, hence they felt maltreated as Lagosians. It should be noted that to allay this fear of being marginalised as “atohun riwa” or “alejo” – foreigners, some groups carelessly claim affinity/ancestry with prominent accepted indigenous group of Lagos so as to have a fair share of treats. Ebunoluwa Akinbo’s multimedia presentation captures this form of identity renunciation in a very interesting and creative way. Some of her subjects claimed to have changed their names and recreated their origin story to gain acceptance in the larger Lagos society.

There is no doubt that these exhibits elicit more discourse on the notion of ownership and identity of Lagos. The artists are part of Lagos ‘ara eko’ and their subjectivity and romanticisms could not be divorced from their visual expressions. However, a lot of questions are yearning for answers: why don’t we see images of sacred sites in Lagos “Eko” and those of royal paraphernalia as part of the collections? There are several which till dates have “fingerprints” of Lagos narratives as abode of the Awori, war camp, pepper farm and extension of Benin empire. This, to me, would extend our search to archeological and cultural exploration of the subject matter and give us more access to the multilayered history of Lagos. 

References

Gordon, Robert and Jonatan Kurzwelly. 2018. Photographs as Sources in African History. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford Press USA.

Rosenblum Naomi, 2019. A world History of Photography. 5^th edition. Abbeville Press Publisher. New York.