During a trip to Lagos in 2015, Karl Ohiri noticed something alarming. The British-Nigerian artist observed how long-running photography studios in the city were destroying their archives—sometimes incidentally, sometimes purposely—as they shuttered or moved out of the city into quieter village settings. And as a generation of photographers shifted to digital methods, film began to literally disappear.
Ohiri was moved to remedy this phenomenon, so he struck up relationships with local photographers and began acquiring endangered negatives “in an attempt to ensure that this precious cultural heritage was not lost over time,” he says in a statement. The Lagos Studio Archives project was born.
“The initiative’s main aims are to collect, preserve, and present the imagery of a generation of photographers that captured the style, humour, and aspirations of everyday Lagosians,” a statement says. Its mission revolves around spotlighting otherwise hidden narratives in one of Africa’s biggest hubs, “whilst further expanding dialogues around West African photography, culture, and the legacies of the diaspora.”
Ohiri, along with his partner, Finnish-British artist Riikka Kassinen, conceive of Lagos Studio Archives as a means of preserving and showcasing the wealth of history, culture, style, and daily life in Nigeria’s former capital. Formally organized in 2016, the archive has developed and exhibited images internationally at venues like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and South London Gallery
“The project was initiated out of a growing concern that on a long enough timeline, a void would be created where large sections of Lagosian history would be lost and unable to be retrieved,” Ohiri and Kassinen say. “This vacuum could lead to gaps in representation within mainstream Nigerian culture that could have serious repercussions for present and future generations of Nigerians trying to gain a deeper understanding of their heritage and culture.”
To date, the archive houses negatives saved from more than twenty studios, consisting of thousands of images. “Through conversations with
photographers from the analogue era, the project has engaged in dialogues that explore the importance of preserving photographic archives as an integral part of shaping collective identity,” the artists say.
Currently based in Helsinki, Ohiri and Kassinen’s individual practices explore relationships between lived experiences within contemporary society and socially engaged dialogues around heritage and culture. As the pair develop images in the collection, distinct series and themes organically emerge.
The color images shown here are part of an initiative titled Archive of Becoming, which focuses on deteriorated negatives, primarily of studio portraits. As a result of humidity, mold, heat, and other elements, the photos develop with psychedelic colors, dissolved emulsion, and blank areas.
and Funmilayo Abe, Alagbado, Lagos” (2024)
“By resurrecting these images from negatives and displaying them in their new context, the works speak of the sad state of some of the negatives,” the duo says. “However, it also talks about a certain beauty that can be found in decay that expresses the passing of time and the unpredictable life of images.”
Another body of work focuses on a husband-and-wife team who ran Abi Morocco Photos, which operated between the 1970s and 2006. The studio captured a wide array of fashionable portraits in black-and-white that celebrate myriad nearly-lost visual narratives of Lagos around the turn of the 21st century.
Ohiri and Kassinen describe the archive as an intersection between an artist-run project and a social entity, centered around the “idea of collective responsibility in preserving heritage and culture as a form of activism that starts with the individual.” Explore much more on Instagram, where you can follow updates about exhibitions, newly developed photos, and a forthcoming book focused on the work of Abi Morocco Photos. (via WePresent)
