Cultural Memory, Counter-narratives in Adisa Olasile’s Photography

Yinka Olatunbosun

Diasporic energy travels through the photography of Adisa Olasile, a Nigerian born creative whose love for photography races back to his younger years. As an undergraduate of Osun State University where he studied Linguistics and Communication Studies, he started off using his phones to take pictures. For him, rewriting his story is not necessarily done with a pen but exists right in his hands- a mobile phone.

Then something happened in Ibadan, the largest city in West Africa during the mandatory National Youth Service Corp programme that validated this. The experience changed his trajectory and vision for good. An elderly drummer at the secretariat whom he used to see weekly while on the Community Development Service captured his attention. Being a spontaneous photographer, he decided to take his picture and posted it, albeit offhandedly, on Twitter now X. The picture went viral and he decidedly sold the picture popularly named “Baba Ilu” as NFT.

At that point, Olasile embraced photography more with intention. Far from being motivated by financial gain, he becomes more driven by the need to use photography as an art form to create counter-narratives that will shape contemporary perspectives of the African. The global media has- for a long time-centred African discourse within predictable subject matters and contexts such as colonialism, migration and other fractured mirrors of understanding the African heritage. But without a word, Olasile is re-angling the narrative one frame at a time.

Indeed, the urgency to share his identity and cultural memory peaked upon his arrival in United Kingdom in 2023. Drawing heavily upon his previous encounters with everyday people and daily human experience, he would take pictures to celebrate the African spirit. His love for humanity becomes a big influence in his work. Additionally, he acquired knowledge from books that documented the famous photographers in African history. Burrowing into the works of two legendary photographers from Mali, Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibe, he traced how these photographers shaped the culture through visual storytelling that affirms African empowerment, dignity and self-representation.

These photographers laid a precedence for him in positioning the lens to reconstruct the African identity and create emotional recall for the viewers. From Portsmouth to Peckham, Olasile pans his camera across the beauty of cultural diversity and adjusts to focus on what resonates with his African roots.

This is very evident in his photography series called “Lagos in London.” Set in Peckham, London, Olasile captures Nigerians, mostly older women and men dressed in full Yoruba attire, aso oke, gele, iro and buba, walking down the streets of Peckham. That cultural representation becomes a fixture in his work. Sometimes, it comes with drawing parallels. Like Peckham, Isale Eko is a dense, vibrant urban city. Due to a large population of Nigerians in Peckham, there’s everyday nostalgia embodied in the city’s cultural life. This, he captures in the piece titled “Yoruba Dior” which features two Nigerian women clad in traditional attire across the street. One of them has a Dior-branded fabric draped over her traditional outfit. That picture resonates the Africans- in – diaspora energy navigating the complexities of cultural displacement, cultural hybridity and the longing for home.

While this piece primarily speaks to the Nigerian experience in London, the meaning transcends the exact locale as it amplifies the struggles of migrants who constantly have to reconcile their dual realities across the world. Olasile’s identity-focused photography which he calls “documentary fine art” taps into cultural elements manifested in fashion. By challenging the mainstream stereotypical representation of the migrants, Olasile provokes conversations around diasporan artists’ preoccupation with post-colonial narratives as well as the beauty in everyday black life with his street documentary series.

With “Ojude Peckham,” Olasile documents Nigerians in traditional attire walking across the streets of Peckham, London celebrating cultural pride and heritage. By reclaiming black joy in his old series shot in Ibadan titled “Ayo,” he proves that the African story need not to be defined by hardship and pain but love, dignity, unfiltered moments of happiness in African life as well as resilience in the face of systemic oppression.