Stephen’s Pleasant Pix Familiarize Nice Memories Concerning Community.

From logos blossoming drag scene to the robust bonds that unite twins, the nigerian photographer is cause on sparking verbal exchange through his work.

Across the African continent, a brand new generation of young creatives are spearheading a innovative growth. With the load of the world’s eyes upon them, these people paintings outdoor of old style western dictates, at times rejecting such antiquated structures altogether. One notable, and in particular refreshing, discern amongst them is nigerian photographer stephen tayo.

Tayo captures the fact of his environment, showcasing the beauty of community, continually centering his topics’ particular sense of style. Fusing the vintage and the brand new, the philosophy important has spent. The beyond few years creating a profound and welcoming body of labor layered with symbolism regarding identification, circle of relatives, and friendship.

His topics are captured in detail in their everyday environments – thru his lens, surplus is stripped away, as he makes a speciality of the multilayered dialogues that surround every person. Fleeting moments of mundanity are regularly expanded to things of splendor.

Created throughout an artist residency with the arthouse foundation in 2020, stephen tayo’s latest undertaking ‘what if?’ is a collaboration with drag artists in lagos. Captured in an intimate setting loose from societal scrutiny and police brutality, the photographer juxtaposes the extra fluid gender expression of precolonial yorubaland to the colonial warping of those ideals.

What if questions truth: what if drag is the manner of life? What if we lived in a international free of societal expectations and obstacles? A world unfastened from the traditional gaze of each the nigerian public and government? What if those younger people weren’t treated like outcasts because they display their unique kingdom of individualism?

I caught up with stephen tayo in ebute metta – a compound he spent numerous time in as a child, and still shoots round every so often – to speak about developing up in lagos, the nigerian drag scene, #endsars, and the use of artwork as advocacy.