Bubblegum Club

Tag: Nigerian Identity

  • Photographer and Journalist Rahima Gambo’s ‘Education is Forbidden’ makes a social commentary on the post-colonial education system in north-eastern Nigeria

    Photographer and Journalist Rahima Gambo’s ‘Education is Forbidden’ makes a social commentary on the post-colonial education system in north-eastern Nigeria

    Rahima Gambo studied Development at the University of Manchester and thereafter completed a Masters in Gender and Social Policy at the London School of Economics. This was followed with her Masters in Journalism at Columbia Graduate School in 2014. Her interdisciplinary practice looks at Nigerian identity, gender, socio-political issues and history. Her series Education Is Forbidden makes use of photography, illustration, text and film to articulate a troubling narrative that remains without end.

    With her photo essay, Education is Forbidden, the photographer and journalist challenges the Boko Haram insurrection, the condition of the post-colonial education system in north-eastern Nigeria as well as the status of women in society. Showcased as a part of the curated projects at ART X Lagos art fair, it has been in development since 2015.

    The project has been built on and grown due to support given by the International Women’s Media Foundation, propelled forward by “a curiosity to understand what it means to be a student on the front lines.” Rahima, who is from the region and currently residing in Abuja, travelled to schools and universities in various states to meet activists, pupils and teachers. This acted as an entry point for her documentation of the lasting trauma and infrastructural deterioration, beginning decades before and is currently destabilised by conflict.

    To create this body of work Rahima’s approach was to show girls from a stylised, prolific point of view. Employing traditional portraiture techniques, the photographer aimed to focus on points of familiarity and visual signifiers that remind her audience of how carefree school days should be. These signifiers include a girl blowing a bubble with chewing gum and other girls calmly look into her lens. The works take a frontal approach created collaboratively with the girls that she photographed.

    Rahima tells these girls’ stories as their youth is poisoned by these events of trauma. It is important to note that she does not intend to label them by these circumstances or define them as victims. “The project is not based on trauma because you can find that in any condition, no matter how comfortable…” she expresses in an interview with Nataal. Her series has the twofold effect of being both a visual documentation and captured moments of collective memory. Her work is then a visual narrative speaking of the cruelties of conflict and its effect on the educational framework of the region.

  • Nigerian Identity. Beautiful. Effortless. Powerful.

    Nigerian Identity. Beautiful. Effortless. Powerful.

    Ruth Ginika Ossai grew up in Eastern Nigeria and is currently based in West Yorkshire. She takes on the identity of a photographer and an Igbo/Yorkshire warrior, assuming this identity as a part of her dual heritage.

    Examining Ruth’s work, one can see the warrior in her coming to the foreground. In her practice, she aims to celebrate African beauty, question Western standards of beauty and represent and empower Nigerians and Africans wherever they may be geographically situated. A variety of faces and styles embody Ruth’s message and the viewer is drawn to her sitters. Men in cowboy hats, women wearing chainmail bodysuits tastefully styled with red patent boots and women in traditional Igbo attire is the visual sustenance that Ruth feeds her audience.

    “I’m really infatuated by the way in which photography can tell stories, capture and empower black identity and culture. Especially Nigerian identity, which is so beautiful, effortless and powerful. This is something I have been surrounded by and capturing all my life. My photography is not a response to anything particular but I am a strong advocate of photographers who are embedded in the context in which ideas are produced, participating in the contextualising of their images. It becomes very problematic when Nigerians — and other Africans — cannot tell their own stories: it becomes too often incomplete, inaccurate and stereotyped. This narrative has needed changing for too long. My work is also honestly partly a reflection of myself; I love and never stop thinking about West Africa, whether I’m home or away.”

    Ruth’s images speak to her adoration of the photographic lens and the powerful ability it contains to speak about and create narratives. Ruth’s ocular eye does not only capture black identity and culture but her innate sensitivity and candid hand acts as a tool of empowerment. Acting as a participant within this narrative, photographers like Ruth are contextualizing her own culture in a way that she wishes it to be seen. As Ruth states, it is of the utmost importance that people tell their own stories and when it happens differently often inaccurate depiction takes place and room is created for the breading of stereotypes. A self-reflective photographer, Ruth’s images are not only striking but their vividness and candid feel adds to the authenticity of the captured moment and the photograph as an object becomes more than that; it becomes a feeling.