Photographic Realism in Nigeria

After Independence in 1960, postcolonial modernists in Nigeria like Uche Okeke and Demas Nwoko began to produce art that merged learned indigenous and global visual traditions into new visual languages for the postcolonial era. Skeptical of the so-called “abstraction” that pervaded the work of this younger generation of artists, first generation modern Nigerian artist Akinọla Laṣekan, self-trained as a painter, illustrator and political cartoonist, continued to insist upon realism as the formal language that would secure an African Renaissance. This essay traces the origins of Laṣekan’s commitment to realism to the earlier writing and practice of pioneer Nigerian colonial modernist Aina Onabolu. It examines the claims that an African Renaissance would be articulated in a visual language that privileged the clarity of form and message – the legibility – offered by realism. The disjunctures of realism, between the future once dreamt of and the realities of history, are played out in this essay’s analysis of relations between painting and photography, and between imagination and naturalism.