With Atolagbe’s lens, art of photography captures curiosity
The sub-conscious characteristics of individuals, which either define strength or weakness, attract the lens of photographer, Olaniyi Atolagbe, as the photo artist implores a conceptual approach to portrait photography.
For being conceptual, Atolagbe’s photography strengthens the importance of the digital era of the 21st century in creating images. More of interest, the creative energy in the photographer brings themes that are crucial to human curiosity, as well as highlighting spiritual connection to imagination.
Viewing the works of Atolagbe with a foreknowledge of his background gives a better depth of what side of critique one should lean towards. Atolagbe, who has a background in Mathematics, seems greatly influenced by his social, cultural and spiritual environments, on which he grew up. His background and experiences have collectively brought surreal contents into his works, explaining the emotional and sometimes fantasy contents of his photography.
Going into the spiritual space, Atolagbe engages human strength of imagination in a piece titled ‘Rooted Dreams’ in which he depicts a woman and her energy of connection with the spirit of a tree. With double exposures, Atolagbe blends the contemplative portrait of the woman with the powerful form of a tree, symbolizing the interconnectedness of human nature, body, memory and spirit. Specifically, ‘Rooted Dreams’ embodies the blurred lines between experience and its memory, suggesting how the past can either be cherished or loathed.
While Atolagbe flaunts his sense of conceptuality in ‘Rooted Dreams’ with the double exposure technique he applied, the single colour for the two overlapping images of the lady and branches of tree appear to weaken the concept. Perhaps, a clear differential in colour of the two images fading into each other would have created a higher depth of concept.
From pieces such as ‘Unseen Exchange’ and ‘Unseen Self’, Atolagbe continues illusory and fantasy contents that probe into the imagination of people. Between the surreality of the images and the captured individuals’ supposedly meditation, there are creative as well as spiritual takeaways. And just like some of the flashes encountered in dreams and imaginations, the images from Atolagbe’s lens come with the duality that life brings in general.
However, between ‘Rooted Dreams’ and ‘The Unseen Self’, the photographer’s peculiar signature and identity in conceptual photography is exposed: while one comes in dark tone, the other brings brighter images. As regards the context of identity in art, most artists would like to be known for diversity while still retaining their signature. For Atolagbe, ‘The Unseen Self’ and ‘Rooted Dreams’ nearly take diversity from his identity; the two works are almost identical in colour and the model used.
Still searching for the diversity in Atolagbe’s conceptual photography, there comes a set of works that brings something different. Supporting Atolagbe’s creative dexterity are works such as ‘Iberu Bojo’, a capturing of anxiety, fear, and perhaps meditation of a lady in either spiritual, environmental, or psychological communication with some unknown entity; ‘Adé Okùnkùn’ (Crown of Darkness), crowded head of a Black woman in imagination of the unseen, as the many items on her head represent unknown travails; and ‘Passage of memory’, a figure that depicts how fragile human memory is, noting that every step forward echoes the duality of forgetting and becoming.
