New Photography 2023
May 28, 2023 – September 16, 2023
The Museum of Modern Art, NYC
11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019
After a five-year hiatus, MoMA’s ongoing New Photography 2023 exhibition features Nigerian artists Kelani Abass, Akinbode Akinbiyi, Yagazie Emezi, Amanda Iheme, Abraham Oghobase, Karl Ohiri, and Logo Oluwamuyiwa documenting the flourishing port city of Lagos. Since 1985, MoMA’s New Photography series has commemorated 150 artists, highlighting the importance of photographic work in documenting contemporary cultural landscapes.
Being the first edition of the New Photography series based on a rigid geographical framework, New Photography 2023 expands the vision of the longstanding series while tightening its scope. The featured artists avoid traditional Western depictions of the region and build upon modern and historical narratives of colonialism and rich legacies of citizenry.
Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city and one of the most populous series in Africa, is a multidimensional starting point for artists to render their photographic works. In the 1760s, Portuguese settlers arrived in the city, referred to as “Eko” at the time, and renamed it Lagos after a coastal city in south Portugal. The slave trade flourished from its ports, and the city became an eventual entry point for British colonialists into Nigeria.
Remnants of British colonial rule are depicted in Amanda Iheme’s photographs, which capture Cuban-Brazilian architecture that once housed slaves in the 1840s. As the ownership of these historical buildings has been passed down and transformed to fit modern life, fading vestiges of colonialism become points of contention in Iheme’s work.
Artists like Yagazie Emezi focus on capturing the modern-day realities of African women and human rights conflicts in Nigeria. Emezi’s collection of photographs from the #EndSARS protests document the 2020 youth-led protests against Nigeria’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).
Artists like Yagazie Emezi focus on capturing the modern-day realities of African women and human rights conflicts in Nigeria. Emezi’s collection of photographs from the #EndSARS protests document the 2020 youth-led protests against Nigeria’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).
In addition, collections such as Abraham Oghobase’s Constructed Realities, featuring multimedia manipulations of photography and text, offer a new, layered medium to stretch past the bounds of other works in the series. Although contrasts exist between the artists’ works, they are united in their dynamic efforts to document Lagos through a unique, global perspective. Challenging what it means to justly document the interconnected and varied culture of a city, New Photography 2023 is a refreshing and necessary addition to MoMAs New Photography series.
