By Tajudeen Sowole
Four years after U.S-based
photographer, Dr Olusegun Fayemi showed some images of digitalised technique in
Lagos, his attempt to blur the line between painting and photography comes
stronger in collage form.
Currently on as Beyond Silver Gelatin: Mixed Media
Photography at Quintessence Gallery Falomo, Lagos, the new works of Fayemi
could have passed as collage paintings.
In Fayemi’s work, the scientific
characteristics of photography is combined with art and cultural value of using
images as narratives, particularly to express African contemporaneity. And that
his themes, most times centre on African women and children – a mission he
embarked on to offer alternative images to the west – also makes the technique potent.
In 2009, when he showed a body of
work titled Mothers of Africa at the same venue, it was all about image processing,
bringing original photo shoot from black and white to diverse tones and shades
of colours. With Beyond Silver Gelatin,
the artist goes a step further into larger than life by cutting pieces of
fabric onto the processed images in collage-like technique. The result is an
impressionistic look, which makes the monochrome original either faints or fades
underneath the louder and vibrant collage of fabric with the digital imaging. Adorned, Party Time, Gele and Three In One are examples of the
narratives, which also produce outlines that could represent drawings.
He insists that the process “begins
usually with a black and white negative that I scan under high resolution into
a computer from which a fine photographic print is made.” The resulting images,
he explained, is altered, using digital “to a realistic, artistic
representation or an abstraction of the original.”
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| Three in One, by Dr Olusegun Fayemi |
Bringing his science discipline
to bare on his passion for art, within the context of photography, Fayemi’s
experiment appears like a conscious effort to achieve painting without the
conventional art studio tools. “For decades I did fine art and documentary
black and white photography in the footsteps of illustrious and dedicated
practitioners of the craft,” he stated. However with the dynamics of
photography in recent times, seen what he noted as “unprecedented explosion of
technological advances,” the boundaries between art, craft and photography is
disaapearing.
From the evolution of photography
and how his art is bringing new images to collapse the line between genres,
comes the theme. He recalled how in photography, the gelatin silver process was
used for black and white films and printing paper. For his fourth showing in Nigeria, the
theme, he said, “focuses on the diversity and multiplicity of imagery that
emanates from process. These images articulate the realities of contemporary
Africans as they traverse a wide spectrum in the rhythm of their daily lives
and they reveal timeless narratives of how Africans live and the nuances that
shape those lives.”
In the past, Fayemi’s passion for image change has led to authorship of books
such as Windows to the Soul: Photographs
Celebrating African Women; Voices
From Within: Photographs of African Children; Balancing Acts: Photographs from West Africa. All books published
in the US.
Assessing the impact of his works in or
changing the west’s stereotypes about Africa, Fayemi averred that it’s still a
long journey as perception is hard to change.
Having shown Fayemi more than
once, Quintessence Gallery’s
attraction to his work is based on the “qualities of analogue and the versatile
potential of digital imaging,” the curator, Moses Ohiomokhare stated. “He is
exposing us to a new art, science and practice of photography and pushing the boundaries.”
Fayemi studied photography privately
with Alex Harsely and Richard Sternschuss of New York, at the New School for
Research and the International Centre for Photography and Zone VI studios,
Newfane, Vermont. In the last twenty-nine years, he has engaged his energies in
documentary photography and this has taken him to different parts of the world.
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