Lakin Ogunbanwo
Rather than separating out the often false (or at least flimsy) distinctions between portraiture, fashion, and fine-art photography, Lakin Ogunbanwo’s work lovingly invites and rewards a more complex receptivity and cross-pollinated approach to these complimentary modes. Lakin’s ongoing interplay of clothing and materials with identity and performance is exceptional, and through his lens has the disarming effect of feeling simultaneously subtle and radical. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, i-D, and many other publications, and has been exhibited at WHATIFTHEWORLD Gallery, Sydney Contemporary, and Red Hook Labs, New York, among others. TSUKI had a conversation over email with Lakin about his ongoing themes, working and shooting during a pandemic, and what we came to agree on as the “new now.”
“I think there is a seductive quality of plastic clinging to skin, or the culmination of sweat under latex gloves.”
TSUKI: In your work there’s an ongoing visual exploration of veils, of concealment, of transparency vs opacity, most obviously in e wá wo mi (come look at me) but it’s also generally present to varying degrees in your other work and exhibitions. For example in the concealment of the faces in Are We Good Enough. And even just the title of your show We Must Not Be Looking speaks to a kind of tension inherent to visual, photographic, and sociocultural languages. And here, too, in this series, through your lyrical, dynamic and variegated use of transparent and colorful plastics. I find these visual motifs especially effective, and perhaps intrinsic, in photography; it feels like a medium built to explore these visual ideas. Or perhaps it’s through your hands/lens/eye that we’re made to feel this way?
LAKIN: I agree, I think this sort of visual language it is very intrinsic to photography. I recently started shooting some short films, and one of the things I quickly realized was the strong need for the actors to emote and perform to the camera, which isn’t necessarily the same for my photography. The use of concealment/veils has always helped explore the ideas I’ve chosen to explore. I’ve always been interested in ambiguity and exploring disguise and performance. In e wa wo mi, I’ve used it to cloud the women’s individuality and used veils as a stylistic representation of their shared experiences as brides. In Are We Good Enough, concealment is adopted to highlight ethnic identity through a hat; I’ve always said to people that Are We Good Enough is really portraits of these hats and the sitter is the prop.
TSUKI: To bring it back to the real word, and down a few notches: There’s some Big Coronavirus Energy happening here in this series. That’s a very inelegant way of putting it, for sure. But either way, I guess it’s hard to ignore. However (and I think this is one of your many strengths) like we’ve already mentioned, your work has often traded in visual ideas of concealment, protection, screens and veils—both literal and figurative—and so these ideas can then easily morph into motifs of real protection, like PPE-level visual codes, right? It’s not all that much of a left turn for you, is what I mean. (By the way, forget Yves Klein Blue, That PPE-Glove-Blue has new beauty for me now thanks to you, hehe. No easy feat!)
LAKIN: Hahaha! Well I struggled to do any kind of work during the lockdown. It was as if my brain had stopped functioning and my mind couldn’t hold on to an idea for too long. In my own playful way I decided to explore our current reality. In a literal sense, everyone on set had to be safe (I’d already had and recovered from COVID-19—and I wasn’t looking to get it again), but more figuratively, some of these elements (visors, gloves etc.) function in a sense as armor. The subjects pose as if in combat, a reference to the continual fighting across humanity, also a serious reminder of these times and a possible projection of the unforeseeable future. Also I think there is a seductive quality of plastic clinging to skin, or the culmination of sweat under latex gloves. In a similar way, face masks prompt us to construct a person’s appearance based on our own desires. I think this was my own way of accepting a new way of thinking, seeing, and being.
“Photography allows for the expansion of similar ideas by systematically recording sameness and difference.”
TSUKI: You have an ongoing engagement with contemporary African and Nigerian identity forming. Across a lot of your work you’ve used photography to both subtly and radically (and often beautifully!) deconstruct and rearrange visual expectations, codes, gestures, and applications that we’ve come to expect from photography. What is it about photography, despite all its baggage and ubiquity, that you find is a compelling format for your ideas?
LAKIN: I believe photography prides itself in telling the truth (even though we know everything is largely influenced by whomever is behind the camera). Photography is very much about capturing what is, as is, and I think this is what all artists strive to do: Tell the truth (their truth) and put it to the world as is. Photography allows for the expansion of similar ideas by systematically recording sameness and difference. For context, one of my big dreams is that in another 50-100 years, another young Nigerian photographer will expand on or even challenge some of the visual narratives I have tried to portray.
Having been in isolation for months, this is my first re-engagement with ‘studio photography’ post-lockdown. The shoot playfully explores events that have unfolded during this time and gives a visual language to the universally binding mood of growing agitation. This series is a stylized documentation of ‘the now’. It is not trying to be anything else, nor looking beyond this time, nor projecting too far into the future or past. It is my version of a shared reality. Sets have changed, reality has changed, and our definitions of ‘safe’ have as well. The ‘new’ is discomforting but also necessary and even exciting.
Lakin Ogunbanwo | Instagram | Gallery Website