In Remember Me- Liberated Bodies, Charged Objects, Festival Interrogates Lens- based Media Influence
RECENTLY, the Alliance Française / Mike Adenuga Centre, Ikoyi, Lagos played host to the 13th edition of Lagos Photo Festival. The fiesta, which held from October 29 to November 12, 2022, interrogated lens- based media influences in archiving and ordering memory and how these construct community and individual identities.
The festival’s theme, Remember Me- Liberated Bodies, Charged Objects, invited the viewer to challenge the subjectivity of ( colonial) archives, build and populate sustainable new modes guided by ancestral and contemporary wisdom.
The curator, Princess Ayoola, said the festival invites the future and the past to collapse into the present, adding, “the artists engage the language of photography to evolve a new language of engagement.”
Ayoola said: “Unwittingly, the camera became the mental augment that helps us, remember and dream, share memories, and imagine vivid worlds, while the human mind is the site for the negotiations and fermentation of visual cues.
“Today, more than ever, humanity has migrated into the visual virtual space where the ocular language is transforming and evolving with rapid pace. These possibilities have allowed us to liberate and possibly augment our bodies, create extensions of ourselves and change the way we live and our capacity for selfexpression as a global society.”
Founder and Director, African Artists' Foundation ( AAF), Azu Nwagbogu, said: “Photography is a medium in the 21st century; it informs, illuminate and makes everything better understood and it actually give us the idea of how the world is formed. This year, we have exhibitors from every generation exhibiting this year. We have both local and internationals photographers and we are focusing on the environment, effect of human activities and climate change, how photography can inform and help us change our habit.”