Category: Research

Johnson Donatus Aihumekeokhai Ojeikere was a Nigerian photographer who despite his very humble beginnings in a rural village in 1930, decided that he wanted to pursue a career in photography. In the year 1968, he began one of his largest and most recognisable projects where he documented various traditional Nigerian hairstyles. By the time that he had completed this incredibly large project, he had printed approximately a thousand pictures of different African womens’ hairstyles. In the February of 2012, he died at the age of 83.

Ima Mfon is a Nigerian “Fine Art Photographer” who works mainly in Lagos, Nigeria and New York, USA. He takes a major influences from photographers such as Richard Avedon, August Sander and J.D. Okhai Ojiekere and challenges audiences to look beyond the surface, which is quite a difficult mission to undertake using a solely visually based artform.

Samuel Fosso is a Cameroonian photographer who was forced to flee his home country to the Central African Republic at a young age, where he has remained for the majority of his career. He works almost exclusively in self-portraiture and often uses the medium as a form of social commentary on topics ranging from post-colonialism to ancient African history and the legends associated with this. He takes on a range personas to achieve this which are separated by their various outfits and often hand-sewn cloth backgrounds.