The 14th edition of LagosPhoto Festival

This year's theme, ‘Ground State - Fellowship Within the Uncanny’

October 28 - December 31, 2023

Curated by AAF's founder and director Azu Nwagbogu, and East Wing Artistic Director (Dubai, UAE) Peggy Sue Amison, the 14th edition of the international photography festival will foster a fellowship of dynamic spiritual change and rebirthing of the unimaginable through the theme 'Ground State - Fellowship Within the Uncanny.' The festival will present a special solo presentation by artist Omar Viktor Diop curated by Maria Pia Bernardoni.

The African Artists' Foundation, a non-profit organization and art space based in Lagos announces the new geographical expansion and curatorial vision for the 14th edition of LagosPhoto Festival, an international photography festival taking place from October 28 - December 31, 2023. This year's theme, 'Ground State - Fellowship Within the Uncanny' will bring together photographic works exploring the present moment and envisioning repair, syncopation, putrefaction, restitution, and restoration. This year's edition marks the first time in its history that the event will be held beyond Lagos, extending to Cotonou and Ouidah in Benin. This geographical expansion offers a wider audience the opportunity to engage with the powerful works of talented photographers, challenging our own complicity in a culture of desire founded on consumption.

The festival just announced an open call for emerging and established artists around the world working with lens-based media to submit their projects with a submission deadline of June 7, 2023. Additionally, the festival will announce a separate Portfolio Review open call with submissions limited to June 30, 2023, where selected photographers will have the opportunity to participate in sessions during the festival with esteemed judges and panelists, including leading gallerists, publishers, educators, and experts from LagosPhoto Festival partner National Geographic.

Photography has always held a mysterious power. In the past two decades, it has played a significant role in the rise of post-truth ideologies encouraging divisive and tribal societies. The malaise of the twenty-first century presents unsettling possibilities and anxieties surging from dystopian post-covid realities, growing conflicts, and the indelible signs of climate change. Recalcitrant colonial mindsets continue to judge worth through an impossible hierarchy. Efforts to imagine decolonized and sustainable futures have been captured in recurring hierarchies of different entities delivering the same results. As society reaches a Ground State, where everything humanity knows as 'common sense' no longer applies, there is an urge to restore, repair and restitute the mysteries of oral histories and aspects vital for survival. For its 2023 edition LagosPhoto Festival invites artists to showcase new perspectives of humanity's revival and equilibrium through hopeful visions of social, political, environment and spiritual change.

Initiated in 2010, LagosPhoto has since created a community of local and international artists united through contemporary photography encapsulating individual experiences and identities from the African continent. Through an extensive program of exhibitions, workshops, screenings and large-scale outdoor installations, the festival promotes education and reclaims public spaces, engaging local and global audiences with the continent's historical and contemporary stories narrated through photography.

As in this year's edition taking place in Benin and Nigeria, the festival's recurring topics of restitution and cultural heritage have set the tone for groundbreaking programs. In 2020's 'Rapid Response Restitution - The Home Museum', audiences were invited to produce a fast shutter retrieval of their personal and family's cultural heritage to be presented in an inclusive digital exhibition, sparking an interest and conversation on cultural heritage and a visual intellect amongst citizens. 'Searching for Prince Adewale Oyenuga' in 2021 presented a project about a missing suitcase with a historic archive of photos and paintings left in Barcelona and repatriated to Nigeria, highlighting the thematic of restitution. In 2022 'Remember Me-Liberated Bodies; Charged Objects' interrogated the photography's influence in shaping, archiving, and ordering the stories of communities and individual identities, determining the way the present and future are constructed.

Portrait of Prince Emmanuel Adewale Oyenuga, 2022 © Adesola Yusuf

ABOUT AAF:
African Artists' Foundation (AAF) founded in 2007, Lagos, Nigeria, is a decentralized, multivalent, metamorphic art space that embraces community values, experimental artistic principles in supporting boundary-breaking and artistic ideas. Over the years, AAF has evolved beyond the limiting shell of a non-profit, to embody an art space that is responsive, attuned to social justice issues, ecology, freedom, community initiatives by empowering creative expression. AAF is dedicated to fostering a deeper understanding and appreciation of contemporary art, design, and culture through residencies, workshops, innovative exhibitions, and educational programs. We aim to further challenge and inspire our community, unearth, and develop more talents while also promoting inclusiveness. Our goal is to be a dynamic and interactive space that sparks meaningful dialogue and encourages critical thinking, celebrates community programs and ultimately to become a change-maker through the power of art.

ABOUT LAGOSPHOTO:
Launched in 2010, LagosPhoto is the first international arts festival of photography in Nigeria. In a month-long festival, events include exhibitions, workshops, artist presentations, discussions, and large-scale outdoor prints displayed throughout the city with the aim of reclaiming public spaces and engaging the general public with multifaceted stories of Africa. LagosPhoto aims to establish a community for contemporary photography which will unite local and international artists through images that encapsulate individual experiences and identities from across all of Africa. LagosPhoto presents and educates about photography as it is embodied in the exploration of historical and contemporary issues, the sharing of cultural practices, and the promotion of social programmes.

Bishoftutown, Ethiopia (part of PostCard Africa) © Meseret Argaw

Bryan Adams: Hear the World

By Bryan Adams

Publisher : Steidl

2024 | 264 pages

Hear the World is a visually compelling and heartwarming collection of over 120 portraits by musician and photographer Bryan Adams, created in collaboration with the Hear the World Foundation. This beautifully curated book brings together some of the most recognizable faces from the worlds of film, music, fashion, and beyond—including Julianne Moore, Bruce Springsteen, The Weeknd, Priyanka Chopra, Jared Leto, Léa Seydoux, and Lenny Kravitz—all captured through Adams' distinctive lens. Each subject strikes the signature "Hear the World" pose, with a hand cupped behind one ear, symbolizing their support for hearing awareness.

The Hear the World Foundation, which focuses on supporting children with hearing loss in low- and middle-income countries, is grounded in the belief that every child deserves the opportunity to hear and live life to its fullest. Adams has been a passionate collaborator with the foundation since 2007, and Hear the World is the culmination of their shared vision to highlight the importance of conscious hearing and advocate for global accessibility to hearing care.

The portraits in Hear the World offer more than just familiar faces—they capture the humanity, individuality, and solidarity of renowned ambassadors uniting for a vital cause. Each image stands as a reminder of the preciousness of sound and the often-overlooked gift of hearing. Through this striking visual anthology, Adams not only showcases his skill behind the camera but also raises awareness of hearing loss and celebrates the foundation's mission.

This book is a testament to the power of art, philanthropy, and collaboration, making Hear the World a touching and meaningful contribution to both the world of photography and the cause of hearing health.

All About Bryan Adams

Mary Ellen Mark: Indian Circus

By Mary Ellen Mark

Publisher : Steidl

2024 | 160 pages

Playful yet haunting, Mary Ellen Mark’s photographs of Indian circus performers depict a world on the brink of disappearance. In 1969, Mark first traveled to India and photographed a circus, captivated by its "beauty and innocence." Two decades later, she returned for six months to document 18 circuses across the country, from bustling cities to remote villages.

Ranging from large troupes with hundreds of performers—both human and animal—to small, intimate acts, Mark's lens captures not the spectacle of the shows, but the quiet moments in between: scenes of practice, rest, and life beyond the spotlight. Her focus is on the human experience—marked by the contradictions of humor and sadness, beauty and hardship. By the time of Mark’s project, Indian circuses were already fading, holding onto an innocence long lost in the West, as they struggled against the pressures of the modern world.

This new edition of her 1993 book preserves the original text and images but reimagines the sequence and design, staying true to Mark’s poignant vision of a dying art form.

All About Mary Ellen Mark

Peter Lindbergh: Dior

By Peter Lindbergh

Publisher : TASCHEN

2024 | 512 pages

Peter Lindbergh photographed Dior’s most exceptional muses, Marion Cotillard and Charlize Theron among them, and signed campaigns for Lady Dior and J'Adore with his inimitable style. Throughout his career, the photographer was one of the house’s closest collaborators. This final book was an original cocreation that was close to the artist’s heart—and to ours.

Seventy years of Dior history projected against the effervescence of Times Square, New York: this was the concept behind Lindbergh’s project, extraordinary both in scope and dimension, for which Dior, in an unusual move, allowed an unprecedented number of priceless garments to be taken from its vaults in Paris and shipped across the Atlantic.

The result is electric. Amid the frenzy of Times Square, Alek Wek glows in the immaculate 1947 Bar suit, the storied ensemble that launched the House of Dior. In snatches of street scenes, models Saskia de Brauw, Karen Elson, and Amber Valletta flit through crowds and scaffolding, are reflected in building façades, and draped in haute couture, from pieces hand-sewn by Christian Dior to more recent designs by Maria Grazia Chiuri. Lindbergh’s trademark monochrome and color photographs masterfully highlight the intricacies, silhouettes, and textures of each garment.

Lindbergh himself is present in every aspect of this publication designed by his long-time collaborator and friend Juan Gatti. This volume features 165 never-before-published images from the shoot, including an introduction by Martin Harrison, and pays homage to Lindbergh’s profound relationship with the Parisian House by curating more than 100 of his photographs of Dior creations, from haute couture to ready-to-wear, men’s and women’s, originally published in some of the world’s most prestigious magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. A breathtaking tribute to two pillars of fashion and photography and their timeless collaborations.

All About Peter Lindbergh

Toilet Alex Paper Prager

By Alex Prager, Maurizio Cattelan, Pierpaolo Ferrari

Publisher : Damiani

2024 | 40 pages

A captivating fusion of the surreal worlds of Toilet Paper and the striking imagery of artist, director, and screenwriter Alex Prager, the latest issue of Toilet Paper magazine presents a visual dialogue between these creative forces. The issue showcases 12 of Prager’s evocative images alongside 12 conceived by the Toilet Paper team. Known for its vibrant aesthetics and playful visual twists, Toilet Paper enters into a dynamic exchange with Prager’s technicolor universe, where the line between reality and fiction is artfully blurred. Her signature use of archetypes, everyday objects, humor, and allegory creates a provocative and mysterious journey throughout the pages. This collaboration follows in the footsteps of ToiletMartin PaperParr (2018), a special edition that celebrated the iconic work of internationally acclaimed photographer Martin Parr, along with the creative minds of Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari. Like its predecessor, this issue brings together distinctive visual worlds in a way that delights and intrigues.

The 14th edition of LagosPhoto Festival

This year's theme, ‘Ground State - Fellowship Within the Uncanny’

October 28 - December 31, 2023

More information about the festival

Selected Books