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2010 was
undoubtedly a very good year for professional photography in Nigeria.
In fact, it was a vintage year; the best so far. But paradoxically, it
was also a year during which relevant questions about the proper place
of photography in the hierarchy of the Nigerian Art scene, its
independence as a valid and separate medium, and its financial value as
collectors’ items, all came to the fore, craving for urgent and
permanent answers.

Most of the
prominent visibility photography enjoyed in 2010 was in the form of
exhibitions; a spate of them. Well, over 20 across the country in
Lagos, Benin City, Port Harcourt, Abuja and ‘unlikely’ venues like
Bonny, Yenagoa, Ekiti, Asaba, and other cities. This huge number of
exhibitions, their logistics as solo and group exhibitions, the
collapse of firm contractual agreements (if there were any) between the
photographer-exhibitors and the myriad of curators, galleries and
institutions, cumulatively highlighted the non-existent or weak
platforms that should guarantee photographers a fair deal financially
and artistically.

Mixed grill

Predictably, the
fact that 2010 was Nigeria’s 50th independence anniversary provided
both the perfect excuse and theme for all manner of ‘commemorative’
photography exhibitions. These exhibitions organised by curators,
galleries and institutions eager to cash-in on the anniversary and
operating on various levels of competence and expertise, inevitably
ensured that these ‘novel’ photography exhibitions were a worrying mix
of excellence, growing mediocrity, and sheer uncreative.

Many
photographers, it seemed, were more eager to make creative statements
in all these ‘prestigious’ exhibitions than appreciate and exploit the
excellent business opportunities they provided. In the end,
collectively, photographers made much less money compared to the
windfall of the curators, galleries and institutions sponsored by
blue-chip companies, state and federal governments.

Photographers also
faced the big challenge of how to endure the new burden of an emerging
number of specialist local and foreign curators and gallery owners
trying to hoist their theories and expectations on which direction
photography in Nigeria should take and how quickly too.

Dilemma of definition

And so, whilst
photography is desperately trying to find its long-overdue and right
place in Nigerian Art, it is simultaneously facing the dilemma of
definition. What is and where should photography in Nigeria, in its
longevity and diversity, head for in terms of sustainability, better
creativity, and financial reward for professionals? It has become
obvious that photography in Nigeria needs to grow independently of
whatever sympathetic ‘Eurocentric’ curators, academics, galleries and
institutions profess in the ongoing extensive world debate on what
constitutes modern photography.

The widely-used
buzzwords are ‘engagement’ and ‘narratives.’ Whose, remains the
question. Prophetically yet unplanned as such, the Centre for
Contemporary Art (CCA), Yaba, Lagos, with its one-month-long Fine Art
photography workshop, with the theme ‘On Independence and the
Ambivalence of Promise’, held between February 8 and March 6, set the
tone and flavour for most of the prominent photography exhibitions in
2010.

The aim of the
workshop was “to focus not so much on technique but on methodology,
critical thinking, conceptual ideas and their implementation.” The
contents of the programme included, “history of photography and its
conceptual dimensions, methodology and strategies for the development
of artistic practice, development of critical thinking skills, and a
final exhibition.”

With a core of 13
facilitators from Belgium, Switzerland, Finland, Cameroun, Nigeria,
Brazil, Ghana, Sweden, and the U.S.A. and observers from Kenya and
Germany, the CCA workshop provided a global platform for exchange of
ideas, skills acquisition, and intellectual discourse on photography. I
presented a paper situating photography in Nigeria and the work of
Jonathan Adagogo Green of Bonny, within the global photography scene of
the late 20th century.

The subtle message
was to guard against a bias towards thinking that Eurocentric concepts,
ideas and even creative perceptions and techniques are ultramodern or
‘superior’ to the experience of indigenous Nigerian photographers in
one whole century of practice.

It remains
important to always emphasise that the tradition of indigenous
photography professionalism is well over a century old and started by
carving a niche of respect for creative and technical excellence by
global standards then.

Contested concept

It is instructive
that the historical place of photography in Nigerian contemporary Art
had to be revisited many times in 2010. Most significantly, perhaps,
was at the stakeholders’ public hearing on the proposed National
Gallery of Art Bill at the National Assembly on Thursday, November 4,
2010. It was a ‘star-studded’ affair that attracted the minister of
culture and tourism and his aides, the acting director general of the
National Gallery of Art (NGA), representatives of the Society of
Nigerian Artists (SNA), representatives of the Photographers
Association of Nigeria (PAN), Art galleries’ owners, Art critics, Art
collectors and lovers, and the general public were also there. It was
also an exhaustive exercise which required a meticulous review of the
suggestions that had been incorporated into the proposed Bill under
review.

When it was time
to define some of the functions of the NGA, it was unanimously agreed
that it should collect ‘modern Nigerian Art,’ and given the nature of
the stakeholders involved and the need to be specific, the next item
became an examination of the term itself.

Rasheed Gbadamosi,
an avid art collector and patron, proffered that ‘modern Nigerian Art’,
as substantiated by Art academics, started in the 1920s with the
emergence of Aina Onabolu as Nigeria’s first trained contemporary
artist. This has been the long held view, but it had to be demystified.
I countered by offering the information that since photography is now
globally accepted as an Art form, the correct beginning of what can be
identified as ‘modern Nigerian Art’ is the work of Bonny-based Jonathan
Adagogo Green, whose photographs taken in the late 1890s were a big hit
in Europe. Of course, there is now a body of academic evidence to prove
this important point.

In many ways, the
fact that photography as modern Art in Nigeria preceded contemporary
visual arts in the country by more than three decades is an
uncomfortable fact for art activists, particularly within the SNA. They
seem to be driven by the grandiose ideas of being the ‘parent’ body of
artists who should determine the fate and direction of Art in Nigeria.

The stakeholders’
sessions should by now have made clear that artists, photographers, and
architects, the three bodies the NGA is mandated to nourish and
protect, are equal partners in the national creativity progress.

The fact that most
artists in Nigeria paint photographs does not help the case of the Art
lobbyists trying to enshrine the concept of superiority within the
spectrum of contemporary Art in Nigeria. Numbers have never translated
into absolute quality.

That Art
collectors and galleries in Nigeria are yet to fully appreciate the
aesthetics and financial value of photography is more of their loss
than that of photographers who continue to be appreciated globally.

Finding the right
place for photography was the challenge and problem curators,
galleries, academics, collectors and institutions grappled with in
2010, with varying degrees of success.