October 24, 2025
Lots of the photographic artifacts had been discarded, destroyed, or just left to deteriorate.
The Lagos Studio Archives challenge is working to salvage hundreds of photographic negatives from analog portrait studios throughout Lagos. Lots of the artifacts had been discarded, destroyed, or left to deteriorate. Initiated by British-Nigerian artist Karl Ohiri and British artist-curator Riikka Kassinen, the archive seeks to reclaim visible information of on a regular basis life in Lagos from roughly the Nineteen Seventies till the early 2000s.
The archive now contains supplies from over 20 studios. The portrait collection showcases Lagosians in trend, household groupings, celebrations, and on a regular basis moments. The gathering is described as capturing the model, humor, and aspirations of on a regular basis Lagosians in a number of a long time.
“I feel within the pictures you possibly can see there was an perspective of optimism, a carefree feeling amongst many,” Kassinen advised WePresent.
Ohiri agrees, “You’ll be able to see that there’s optimism within the air on this transitional interval; western applied sciences and clothes are coming in, there’s ’70s youth tradition, trend. It was a very essential second in Nigeria’s historical past.”
Ohiri and Kassinen say they started after discovering native picture studios disposing of their movie databases as digital strategies took over and studios closed down.
“Studio images was very large in Nigeria within the ’70s—folks needed to report their lives. Once I’d ask these photographers if I might see their archives, they’d say they didn’t have them, some stated they’d destroyed them. A lot of them have been burning them, others have been leaving them to deteriorate in humid circumstances. Of their eyes the work had been performed, why retailer all of it?” Ohiri advised WePresent.
Having rescued and digitized most of the negatives, the Lagos Studio Archives has curated a number of worldwide exhibitions. The work from one of many studios, Abi Morocco Images, operated by John and Funmilayo Abe within the Nineteen Seventies-2000s, was featured in “Abi Morocco Images: Spirit of Lagos“ at Autograph Gallery in London.
The crew emphasizes that their purpose shouldn’t be merely to protect images however to engender a collective accountability round images, reminiscence, and heritage.
The challenge additionally exposes an urgency of preserving Lagos’ analog archives, that are susceptible to neglect or erasure.
Ohiri emphasised the purpose, stating, “There’s an actual sense of urgency to the work. There are 4 or 5 archives we maintain whose house owners have handed away since we began the challenge. When that occurs, the entry to context and knowledge is erased.”
The Lagos Studio Archives challenge is crucial to a bigger discourse about possession and preservation. This concentrate on rescuing marginalized narratives mirrors the continued reckoning round African artwork and images held in Western museums. Simply because the Lagos Studio Archives brings native voices to the forefront, calls are rising louder for British museums and different international establishments to half with their holdings of African cultural artwork. As conversations about restitution and repatriation escalate, the archival work in Lagos serves as a vivid reminder of the breadth of what has been misplaced—and what is likely to be returned.
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