The Photographic Work of Rotimi Fani-Kayode
Photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode, the son of a chieftain of Ife, the ancestral capital of the Yoruba people, was born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1955, He moved at the age of eleven, with his family to Brighton, England, in order to escape the Nigerian Civil War. Fani-Kayode studied at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and later at the Pratt Institute in New York, where he earned his MFA in 1983.
After graduating, Fani-Kayode returned to England, settling permanently, to pursue a career in photography. A prominent figure in the Black British art scene, he was a founding member and the first chairman of Autograph ABP, the Association of Black Photographers, in 1968. During the height of the AIDS crisis and in response to the homophobia in both England and his home country of Nigeria, Fani-Kayode photographed images that called attention to the politics of race, dignified queer black culture and homoerotic desire, and explored cultural differences and identity.
Using ancestral rituals and multi-layered symbolism joined with archetypal motifs from both African and European cultures, Fani-Kayode depicted the black male body as the focal point to probe the boundaries of erotic and spiritual fantasy, and sexual and cultural differences. He saw his work as a way to explore the position of the black body in the imagery of the Western cultures and to contest the narrowness of the Yoruba mindset in terms of homosexuality. Fani-Kayode , using the dramatic lighting of chiaroscuro and the transformation of Yoruba
mythological symbols and rituals, presented intimate moments of queer sexuality as a means of personal and political survival.
Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s photographs have been exhibited internationally since 1985, with numerous solo exhibitions in London, Boston, New York, and Cape Town. In 2003, his work was featured in the African Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale and, in 2011, in ARS 11 at the Kiasma-Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland. Fani-Kayode’s work is represented in the collections of numerous institutions and private collectors including the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Walther Family Foundation, Harvard University’s Hutchins Center, and the Kiasma-Museum of Contemporary Art, among others.
One of the most significant names in the history of black photography, Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s career was cut short by his untimely death at the age of thirty-four in December 1989. Many of his photographs were created in collaboration with his late partner Alex Hirst and are collected in the posthumous 1996 publication “Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Alex Hirst: Photographs”. His work is represented by Autograph ABP, London.
“My identity has been constructed from my own sense of otherness, whether cultural, racial or sexual. The three aspects are not separate within me. Photography is the tool by which I feel most confident in expressing myself. It is photography therefore – Black, African, homosexual photography – which I must use not just as an instrument, but as a weapon if I am to resist attacks on my integrity and, indeed, my existence on my own terms. — Rotimi Fani-Kayode, “Traces of Ecstasy”, Ten-8, Number 28, 1988.
Note: All photographic work shown was a collaborative effort by Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Alex Hirst. Images reblogged with thanks to Autograph ABP, London.