October 24, 2025
Many of the photographic artifacts had been discarded, destroyed, or simply left to deteriorate.
The Lagos Studio Archives project is working to salvage thousands of photographic negatives from analog portrait studios across Lagos. Many of the artifacts had been discarded, destroyed, or left to deteriorate. Initiated by British-Nigerian artist Karl Ohiri and British artist-curator Riikka Kassinen, the archive seeks to reclaim visual records of everyday life in Lagos from roughly the 1970s until the early 2000s.
The archive now includes materials from over 20 studios. The portrait series showcases Lagosians in fashion, family groupings, celebrations, and everyday moments. The collection is described as capturing the style, humor, and aspirations of everyday Lagosians in multiple decades.
“I think in the photos you can see there was an attitude of optimism, a carefree feeling among many,” Kassinen told WePresent.
Ohiri agrees, “You can see that there’s optimism in the air in this transitional period; western technologies and clothing are coming in, there’s ’70s youth culture, fashion. It was a really important moment in Nigeria’s history.”
Ohiri and Kassinen say they began after discovering local photo studios disposing of their film databases as digital methods took over and studios closed down.
“Studio photography was very big in Nigeria in the ’70s—people wanted to record their lives. When I’d ask these photographers if I could see their archives, they’d say they didn’t have them, some said they’d destroyed them. Many of them were burning them, others were leaving them to deteriorate in humid conditions. In their eyes the work had been done, why store it all?” Ohiri told WePresent.
Having rescued and digitized many of the negatives, the Lagos Studio Archives has curated several international exhibitions. The work from one of the studios, Abi Morocco Photos, operated by John and Funmilayo Abe in the 1970s-2000s, was featured in “Abi Morocco Photos: Spirit of Lagos“ at Autograph Gallery in London.
The team emphasizes that their aim is not simply to preserve images but to engender a collective responsibility around photography, memory, and heritage.
The project also exposes an urgency of preserving Lagos’ analog archives, which are vulnerable to neglect or erasure.
Ohiri emphasized the point, stating, “There’s a real sense of urgency to the work. There are four or five archives we hold whose owners have passed away since we started the project. When that happens, the access to context and information is erased.”
The Lagos Studio Archives project is critical to a larger discourse about ownership and preservation. This focus on rescuing marginalized narratives mirrors the ongoing reckoning around African art and photography held in Western museums. Just as the Lagos Studio Archives brings local voices to the forefront, calls are growing louder for British museums and other global institutions to part with their holdings of African cultural art. As conversations about restitution and repatriation escalate, the archival work in Lagos serves as a vivid reminder of the breadth of what has been lost—and what might be returned.
RELATED CONTENT: New Game Invites Players To Liberate Stolen Artifacts From Western Collections
