There was a time, not so long ago, when if you saw an African in a photo, you could bet someone foreign was behind the camera. A missionary, a journalist, or a tourist with a zoom lens and a list of “authentic” moments to collect—famine in focus, dust in the light, smiling school children, every face perfectly grateful.
But rewind further to the present African corner studios, where people posed like royalty against painted backdrops, dressed in their Sunday best, beaming with a pride that needed no translation. Those images weren’t for outsiders. They were for us.
This is how the camera changed hands and what happened when we started telling our own African stories through the lens.
Photography in Africa was never just a matter of pointing and shooting. It was a question of who held the frame and why. Studios, in the early days, were temples of becoming. They were sites of deliberate self-invention. A young man in a double-breasted coat. A woman with kohl-lined eyes and a radio on her lap. Backdrops of palm trees, cars, waterfalls. All imagined futures. These portraits weren’t vanity; they were evidence. We were there and we mattered. We existed outside the colonial gaze.
Over time, the studio became a casualty of speed. Instant culture—disposable photos, selfies, reels—changed the ritual. And now, we can see the change. Young photographers are restoring the studio’s magic, this time with LED lights, projection mapping, and fabric sourced from grandmothers’ trunks.
The Fight for Self-Representation
Photography has long been used to define us. The colonial photo was surveillance disguised as curiosity. The aid agency photo, a form of propaganda. And even now, photo contests and
international exhibitions often reward one aesthetic: struggle with a hint of hope. But African photographers today are fighting to turn the lens inward, reclaiming the right to complexity.
Self-representation demands that we look beyond what’s expected. That we linger in boredom. That we dignify mess. That we challenge the algorithm’s thirst for suffering.
From the Margins to the Center
Twenty years ago, there were fewer names, fewer platforms, and far less interest. Many of our greats were dismissed as hobbyists or artisans. Yet they built archives. They captured ceremonies, conflicts, and quiet moments with a consistency that whispered: one day, someone will need to remember.
We remember, but we also reinvent.
The evolution of African photography is not a straight line. It’s a conversation between generations. J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere’s sculptural documentation of Nigerian hairstyles now speaks to Laetitia Ky’s self-portraits made with hair.
Seydou Keïta’s Malian elegance walks beside the surreal experiments of Prince Gyasi, who paints his images in saturated candy tones.
The tools have changed. Digital cameras replaced film. iPhones replaced digital. But what hasn’t changed is intent to witness, to question and to protect.
The Personal as Political
What’s the role of cultural identity in all this? It’s everything. A photograph isn’t neutral. Every choice—lens, subject, background, even what’s cropped out—says something. And when that photographer is African, the stakes are higher.
Our identities are layered: linguistic, tribal, urban, diasporic. Our cultures are fluid, but they carry memory like a spine. Photography allows that memory to breathe and to find new form. Whether it’s documenting Maasai rituals, queer fashion in Kampala, or the fading blues of indigo dye pits in Kano, African photographers are mapping a continent.
Against the Global Glare
But with recognition comes friction. African photographers still face challenges in the global art and media ecosystem. We’re often included as tokens, the African perspective, in panels curated by outsiders. Grants come with invisible strings. Publications want our work but not our critique. Our images are licensed, exhibited, and praised but are we heard enough?
There is also the burden of representation. If one Ghanaian photographer makes it, the world thinks they understand West Africa. If a Nigerian wins a prize, others must wait their turn. This can seem quite unfair.
And yet, despite this, the work persists.
Photographers build their own festivals like LagosPhoto. They teach workshops in townships. They print zines. They shoot weddings, then shoot editorials. They keep going. Because they have to.
Not because it’s lucrative. Not always because it’s seen. But because the image is a form of survival.
Seven African Photographers You Should Know
In this renaissance of African photography, several voices have risen with singular vision of shaping not just how Africa is seen, but how Africa sees itself:
- Zanele Muholi (South Africa): Visual activist documenting Black queer identity with fierce intimacy and elegance.
- Malick Sidibéi (Mali): The “Eye of Bamako,” celebrated for capturing Malian youth culture in the 1960s and '70s.
- Yagazie Emezi(Nigeria): Known for striking photo essays on identity, trauma, and womanhood across African landscapes.
- Mous Lamrabat (Morocco): A master of contradiction, blending Western symbols with Moroccan tradition in dreamlike fashion.
- Sarah Waiswa (Uganda): Explores displacement, beauty, and belonging through soft, thoughtful portraiture..
- Prince Gyasi (Ghana): Redefines visual storytelling with hyper-saturated images that blend surrealism and social commentary.
- Aïda Muluneh (Ethiopia): Fuses traditional aesthetics with futuristic vision, using bold colors to discuss African dignity and self-determination.
These artists are not just photographers—they’re translators of experience. Each frame is a dialect of memory, protest, play, and possibility.
We Are the Frame Now
In the end, photography in Africa has become something no one anticipated. it has become a conversation we are having with ourselves.
We are no longer image subjects. We are image makers. We are the glitch in the narrative. The color correction. The uncaptioned moment. The memory that doesn’t fade.
We photograph not just to be seen but to see ourselves. To archive the truth, to question beauty, to hold space for everything that came before and everything still unfolding.
Before the shutter clicks, there is that sacred second where everything aligns. The African story, the light, the intent.
Written by Kemi Adedoyin
