Autograph

Everyone in 1970s Lagos was cooler than you. At least they were on the evidence of this show, which collects together the best work of Abi Morocco Photos, a husband and wife duo who documented life in Nigeria as prosperity blossomed and the economy boomed. John and Funmilayo Abe zoomed around Lagos on Vespas with the name of their studio emblazoned across the windshield. They were there to document graduation ceremonies, weddings, gigs. In these gorgeous black and white photos, party people dance to Queen Mummy Juju and laugh with DJs, they pose outside shops, lean against a pile of tyres or next to their battered van. It’s Nigeria booming, but also allowing Western influences to seep into their culture: it’s a society in joyful, prosperous transition. But the Abes’ best work is from their Aina Street studio in Lagos, where they capture Lagosians exactly how they wanted to be remembered against painted backdrops and the most garish curtains imaginable. People came to the Abes to be photographed at their best, their sharpest, youngest, hottest, coolest. They’re in their best clothes, pulling their best poses. These were pictures to look back on with pride. But it’s also intimate. Much of the Abes’ archive was lost, they only saved what mattered to them, so the couple appears here repeatedly; playing with their camera, her in a mini dress, him in flares, or posing at a table looking impossibly hip. It’s a whole world of love and boasting and fashion in 1970s Lagos, and it’s...

The camera is meant to be a tool of truth, an instrument that captures reality. But it captures something else in Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s work: fantasy. The Nigerian-born artist lived in Brixton until his early death in his 30s in 1989. In the privacy of his studio, he was able to use the camera to explore ideas of difference, identity and a whole lot of desire. The first images here are full of African masks and twisted, nude anguish: naked bodies contorted and writhing in a cold, bare, unhomely South London flat. They’re images that express the reality of being an outsider in western society, of his Africanness, his queerness, his everythingness rubbing up awkwardly against the strictures of 1980s English life. The camera gave voice to his frustration, but it also allowed him to express his sexuality, his erotic fantasies. The back wall of this exhibition is a riot of leather and muscles and bulges and pearls and wrestling and total, unbridled desire. They’re beautiful images of beautiful men expressing their deepest urges. The final wall is almost all portraits of two men embracing, carrying, holding each other. A Black man and a white man, allowed to live free, naked, here in the studio if not out in the real world. Fani-Kayode’s mashing together of Yoruba culture, eroticism and a deep dissatisfaction with society’s injustices is powerful. The camera allowed him to live out his fantasies of a kinder, more accepting and much sexier world. That’s a reality we can all hope for.