Nigerian photographer Stephen Tayo exhibits collection at London gallery – ARTnews.com

Lagos-based 28-year-old photographer Stephen Tayo has made a name for himself as a living documentarian of Nigerians’ unique sense of fashion. The New York TimesAnd the ViceAnd the Vogue magazineas well as a portrait painter of major African cultural figures such as Burna Boy and Davido.

This fall, however, Tayo made an appearance Human Stories: The CynicsGroup exhibition in London gallery now. The exhibition, which has also appeared with Thandiwe Muriu, Bubi Canal, Leonard Suryajaya, Nyugen Smith and Thy Tran, explored satire in photography and how it can be used to develop and nurture interconnected identities of gender, race and class.

In recent years, Tayo has become increasingly recognized by the art world for his selfies. Renowned art critic, curator, and Gagosian director Antwuan Sargent featured Taiyo’s work in his 2019 book The new black vanguardand accompanying exhibition in Aperture gallery In New York in 2020.

On NOW, Tayo showed “Which Lagos Day Are You?” Photo series as part of his portrait Na Lagos and Dai Excerpts, employs depersonalization. In these new works, Tayo removes the central human themes of his earlier work and replaces them with faceless figures covered in objects that represent certain rituals specific to Lagos.

“I wanted to create a relationship between the city and the people in a dynamic way,” said Tayo. ARTnews. “The idea is really to look at how I can build around elements of Lagos using street sound, fashion, signage, things that we find about Lagos that are so popular that sometimes we don’t think they need to be explored.”

Tayo added that he wanted the new series to reflect the specificity of his identity as a Nigerian artist based in Lagos, and not just as an African creator.

Tayo learned how to be a photographer primarily by watching YouTube tutorials when he was a philosophy student at the University of Lagos. However, he does not consider himself an arrogant self.

“I didn’t have to be trained in a physical sense. Many of the things I learned in photography came mostly from the digital space,” he said. “If I learned online, I don’t think it’s self-taught anymore.”

He said that Tayo’s passion for photography came from realizing that he did not have enough photos of himself when he was growing up. As a child, he and his family moved around a lot, and photos taken during the moves are often lost.

“I started to document in the sense of archiving,” he said. As he moved off to university, he began documenting the people in his life—cousins, nephews, siblings, and friends—using his iPhone. The response of his loved ones was encouraging and he began expanding to document his classmates and the architecture on campus.

Many of these things are changing. From the desire to document children [my] of friends now making stories about the times we’re in, the conversations going on,” said Tayo.

He said Tayo’s education in philosophy has helped his approach to photography, where he uses the camera to question diverse experiences and encourage dialogue.

Philosophy is closely related to human practice [my work] as a photographer [includes] Dealing with people and places.

His work has been influenced by the likes of Malian portraiture photographer Seydou Keita, Malian pop culture photographer Malek Sidibe, and Nigerian photographer Samuel Fosso, who is known for his self-portraits that used various characters to comment on the history of Africa.

In 2018, Tayo was commissioned by Dutch streetwear brand Patta and Nike to shoot a campaign for their collaboration launch which was shown in London. Tayo was then hired to shoot Havana Club’s UK campaign with Nigerian-British rapper Skepta in Cuba. Around the same time, File times first Hired photographer to document Lagos fashion.

He also developed a project with Apple on stories of the COVID pandemic. In 2020, he received a British Fashion Council Awards nomination in the ‘New Wave’ category.

In July this year, his photo series “What if?” It was shown at V&A as part of Fashion Africa, which was recently extended through April 2023.

Tayo’s rise and rise comes from his trademark style of merging documentaries and fashion to elevate everyday moments and highlight the beauty of his community.

Tayo is unabashedly committed to showcasing its community. “I think all [African] Creativity should only focus on the privacy of their space. Be proud of it and show it to the world.”