OTHERNESS AND DIFFERENCE: THE PHOTOS OF ROTIMI FANI-KAYODE.

By Nii B. Andrews.

Photography was originally introduced to Africa as an ethnographic tool.

But as early as the 1860s indigenous Africans had opened photo studios in Senegal thus creating an artistic record of Africans from an African perspective and documenting epochal transformations.

The complex and ground breaking photographic corpus produced by the Nigerian born Rotimi Fani-Kayode has cemented his place in art history.

He explored with tremendous insight the questions of spirituality, ritual, race, and self-knowledge; he confronted difference, otherness and specifically homophobia.

Working during the height of the AIDS crisis and as a reaction to the homophobia of both Thatcherite England and his home country of Nigeria, Fani-Kayode produced images that address desire, call attention to the politics of race and representation, and explore notions of cultural identity and difference.

He wrote, “On three counts I am an outsider: in matters of sexuality; in terms of geographical and cultural dislocation; and in the sense of not having become the sort of respectably married professional my parents might have hoped for.”

In some of his photographs Fani- Kayode captures provocative moments of intimacy and communion, as an act of healing, even as a means of personal and political survival.

Some images depict omens of death, such as hooded figures juxtaposed with explicit eroticism.

Between 1983 and 1989; Fani-Kayode, in collaboration with fellow artist, Alex Hirst, photographed nude men (sometimes the artist himself) in performative poses evoking mystical and religious traditions.

In his large-scale portraits, the male body becomes the focal point of a photographic enquiry to imaginatively interpret the boundaries between spiritual and erotic fantasy, cultural and sexual difference.

He references ancestral rituals and infuses a provocative, multi-layered symbolism with multicultural archetypal motifs – inspired by what Yoruba priests call ‘the technique of ecstasy’.

By combining African and European iconography in his work he was able to contest the often marginalized status of Yoruba and African thought and simultaneously explore the vexed position of bodies of African descent.

Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955–1989) was born in Nigeria to a prominent Yoruba family that left Africa as political refugees in 1966 and settled in the United Kingdom.

Following a stint in the United States, where he attended Georgetown University and earned an MFA at the Pratt Institute in 1983, he relocated to England.

In 1987 Fani-Kayode became a founding member and the first Chair of Autograph BP, an association of photographers; he was also active in the Black Audio Film collective.

Like many artists who contracted AIDS, he also addressed his illness directly in his work.

Fani-Kayode’s brilliant career lasted a mere six years and ended when he died of a heart attack on December 12, 1989 at age 34 in a London hospital while recovering from an AIDS-related illness.

He was survived by Hirst who died of AIDS in 1994.

Bisi Alimi – the human rights activist, has been in no doubt as to what Fani-Kayode left behind.

Alimi argued as follows:

“It’s important to emphasize that Rotimi’s works were years ahead of their time,….(When) Rotimi was using photography to highlight sexuality in Nigeria, there were hardly any strong, progressive debates globally…..It challenged the whole concept of black male masculinity and the importance of body empowerment.

Rotimi’s work broke down all the barriers.”

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