A-ARTs: Experimental still-life photography of ‘A Different Light’

'Cork Bottle Lamp' (still-life photography, dated 2026) by Vivian Bunmi Afolabi.

By Tajudeen Sowole

WHILE it has been established that light is a lifeline from which photography gets its survival, photo artist Vivian Bunmi Afolabi extends the practicality with her works. Afolabi, whose work focuses what she tags as ‘still-life photography’ takes her lens art through experimental lamps.

Out of disused objects, specifically bottles, Afolabi generates a new life, extracting creative purpose that takes energy from electricity sources. Afolabi’s attempt at making innovation from reinventing lamp comes with the coalescence of art and science, but with leaning towards technological creativity. The merging of art and science through Afolabi’s lens asserts the origin of photography as a scientific curiosity, which later became a tool in artistic expressions.

However, practicing photography in 21st century, and revisiting light as a source of energy comes with quite some creative responsibility. How deep is Afolabi’s thematic focus in reinventing transmission of light, using improvised lamp? She expresses her depth of creativity in the central theme, A Different Light, in which she installs bottles as key component for improvised or experimental table, floor, bed and reading lamps, among others.

In her experimental journey to give disused and discarded bottles new life, as a major component of lamps, the technological inputs appear in competitive frame with the photography contents. For every piece of installation captured, reflection of light generated from electricity through a bulb and passed down to the bottle, produces A Different Light concept. While applying photography to uncover a new life for discarded bottles, Afolabi also explores lamps in different designs.

While struggling to get out of the stranded thoughts between innovation and photography, the ray of light from every lamp leads to something of more interest. The spot lights generated from each of the lamp suggests that Afolabi’s efforts celebrate innovative photography, though with reinvention of lamps. Whether or not her reinvented lamps serve functional purpose seems irrelevance as the photography aspect of the presentation is more of focus.

For the photography essence, rather than the functionality of the lamps, the works expose how different environment reacts or respond to light. From colourless to green and dark bottles, the illuminations create diversity in spotlighting of many other details in a given space. For example, light from the lamp that bounces on the immediate environment, reviving the aging walls, also asserts Afolabi’s thoughts about giving a new life to every discarded situation or object.

Between objects and humans, the changing of the environment comes as shared inevitable fate, so explains Afolabi’s A Different Light photography. As the bottles get new lives after being discarded in one environment, the symbolism does not exclude people who have been rejected or used somewhere, but seeks relevance in their future plans.

Establishing herself as a still-life photographer comes with its uniqueness as well as expectations. For her works in A Different Light, it would have been more of interest to see diverse themes, especially in generating other objects of still-life. The discarded bottles as the centre of her focus appears too repetitive to engage viewers in more critical appreciation of her works.

Interestingly, her passion in the still-life photography identity also reflects in going as far as naming each work. Some of the titles for each work include poetic identities such as Cork Bottle, Lamp at Dusk, Lamp Corner, Lamp Glow, Lamp Vignette, Warm Bottle, and Reading Nuke, among others.