Azu Nwagbogu, the founder of the Lagos Photo Festival, is guided by a simple credo: He wants to exhibit everybody. Yes, that’s a big goal. But it’s an even bigger continent with a breathtaking range of people, stories and photographers who have been inspired by it.
This year’s festival, which opened over the weekend, intends to use that combination of perspectives and voices to celebrate and stimulate. That includes photographers like Nigeria’s Ade Adekola and Jide Odukoya to France’s Thomas Mailaender and Spain’s Cristina de Middel. Workshops, public screenings and discussions will advance Mr. Nwagbogu’s dream of fostering and nurturing photography in Africa, as it also honors Samuel Fosso for his crucial contributions to the art. The important thing to Mr. Nwagbogu is to put out a mix of work, whether it is by gallery artists or photojournalists from whatever country or continent.
“It’s about showing the work of people who have an African sensibility,” he said. “The idea was to show in Africa, in Lagos, work being done here by amazing talents, regardless of their nationality. I would go to Paris and see incredibly powerful work that was positive and inspiring, but nobody here could see it.”
Now in its fifth year, the festival is perhaps his greatest project in support of photography. Less than a decade ago, he said, there was no real school or center to encourage local talent. That changed in 2008, he said, when the Noor collective ran a workshop that attracted young photographers eager to learn the craft.
The impact of that workshop is still being felt today.
“They just started shooting, even though at first they had no idea of the power of photography,” he said. “Today, a lot of the guys who were at the workshop are the significant voices of photojournalism in Nigeria, like Andrew Esiebo and Nana Kofi Acquah.”
Just as important as developing those talents, he said, was the chance to have a forum where ideas and points of view could be exchanged. That led Mr. Nwagbogu to set up the festival, even if some African critics wondered why outside artists had to be invited.
He thought the photographic encounter was important, something that also led him to encourage exchange programs where African photographers went to Germany while German photographers came to Africa. That interchange, he hoped, would have its own influence over time.
“Other cultures in the West have been built by absorbing cultures,” he explained. “Can you imagine America without the Latin American, African or European influences? These people come and the resulting culture and art is richer.”
In the years since he embarked on this, he has seen some younger photographers – like the ones who were at the Noor workshop — become successful, even though it has come with an unintended consequence. Some of them no longer even practice photojournalism.
“When curators look to Africa for art festivals or exhibits on the way we live here, these guys are the quick reference,” he said. “That’s not bad, but they can become oversubscribed. It’s not their fault. Their skill set and level of exposure allow them to get more doing other things. You can’t argue, since we do not have local newspapers or magazines that could support their work.”
At the same time, there is a sense among some emerging photojournalists that they may have new opportunities they could not have imagined a few years ago. Afose Sulayman Senayon, 24, said the workshops he has attended have greatly encouraged him to document his community while he learns how to tell stories. Today, he works as a photographer at a non-governmental organization that runs libraries.
“Photography changed my life,” he said. “It has empowered me. Azu taught me a lot, but so have the mentors who have come from Berlin, who showed us how to do a documentary project.”
Mr. Nwagbogu is still looking for ways to foster photographic culture locally, especially given the dearth of publications that feature pictures. That’s why he hopes to publish books, rather than have photographers wait for someone to commission a body of work.
“There’s a whole bunch of people under 30 who are creating amazing work,” he said. “What we need to do is to provide new opportunities for them to step in and assert themselves in a more patient way and build up a career.”
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