Camera Obscura

The upcoming LagosPhoto Festival highlights photography that imagines alternative African realities and obscures the medium's role as truth-teller.
Five artists portray imagined African futures in a series of fictional photographs for Documenting Fiction, presented by LagosPhoto recently at the FNB Joburg Art Fair. The selection of artists highlight the thematic scope of the LagosPhoto Festival taking place from 25 October to 26 November in Nigeria. 

The festival was founded in 2010 to establish a community of contemporary photographers who encapsulate individual experiences and identities from across Africa. 

LagosPhoto shines a spotlight on contemporary artists who move beyond the confines of the photojournalistic gaze or photography as a "window to the world" to incorporate conceptual and performative practices that expand traditional photographic approaches.
 
Utilising genres such as staged narratives, performance, appropriation and self-portraiture, these artists push the temporal and spatial boundaries of the photographic medium.
 
The five featured artists shown here consider the complex social and political concerns that define a new Africa in the 21st century. As the range of images attests, they explore how the ubiquity of images plays a vital role in how reality is constructed and articulated. 
 
Take a virtual walk through the exhibition's striking images by scrolling through our Lookbook above.