Cover by Folajimi
The Kaduna Textiles Ltd. “used to provide jobs for millions of people in the 90s and it was running up to 2007, but it stopped running and people lost their jobs.” After the place was closed, some “people went on to steal equipment and what not. Everything there got really bad and terrible,” Vurzie Kim says to me as I stare at the gloomy pictures of the Kaduna Textiles Ltd., she had just recently taken for The People’s Archive ng. Deeply melancholic, the pictures present the current state of the Kaduna Textile Ltd built between 1955 and 1957 with help from the British textile firm, David Whitehead & Sons. The buildings were weathered and ruinous, with overgrown shrubs freely encroaching the spaces. In one of them, there was a patch of stagnant water over a part of the floor, and in another, a group of four people were beside a windowless building; two women, a man sitting on an old motorcycle and a young girl. It is unclear whether they are a family, but what is clear is the depressing drab that hung over their countenance. Vurzie and her teammates were there to “preserve what is left of the place” and to “preserve memories of the place” before it completely falls out of existence.
Kaduna Textiles Ltd, Sept 2025; by Vurzie.
As one of the many genres of photography, documentary photography is as old as the practice of photography and has had a major influence on the world and the world’s collective memory. Documentary photography is widely seen as the craft, art of process of taking photographs, visual notes, of people, places and things. It is a visual record of life occurrences, events and people for different purposes such as story-telling, record-keeping or even for research.
In a conversation with Onyekachi Iloh, a 25-year-old photographer based in Enugu, he tells me photography has “different genres.” “You have wedding photographers, street photographers, landscape photographers, and documentary photography” amongst others, he says. “These distinctions are often not absolute because sometimes the genres blend into each other. In many instances, a street photographer could also be said to be a documentary photographer, but not all documentary photographers are street photographers. Some photographers call themselves portrait photographers, which means they take only portraits. But portraits can also be a part of a documentary. And so as a documentary photographer, you might also be a portrait photographer. I would say what differentiates documentary photography from other forms of photography is the intention. Of course, all photographs bring out the slice of time and immortalize it. But documentary photography is basically going out of your way to document.”
Folajimi Emmanuel, a documentary photographer and architect based in Lagos who grew up with a strong fascination for “images” and “documentaries”, explains that documentary photography is dynamic and about “story-telling” during our conversation: “The interesting thing with documentary photography is that it gets you to explore like the other genres of photography. Like your documentary projects could be taking portraits of markets, women in the market and that way, in as much as you are doing documentary photography, you are also employing portrait photography as your tool. So I think what sets documentary photographers apart from the other genres is the fact that there’s always a story. There’s always a theme to whatever is being photographed,” he informs.
During his undergraduate studies, Folajimi had always felt that somewhere in the chapters of the story of his own life, he was going to practice photography, having grown up with an affinity for visual expression due to the documentaries and magazines his dad exposed him to. And after he got his first camera in 2021, he began to document his own visual surroundings and streets. Now, he is concerned with telling visual stories of people and places in ways that “humanizes” them. “I have an interest in documentary photography because I wanted to humanize real life stories,” he says, a thing he has been doing with Chess In Slums Africa. He had “found out on Twitter that they were having an outreach at Oshodi, under the bridge,” and after unsuccessfully reaching out to the team to register his interest as a volunteer, he joined them on the last day of the event, watched and took pictures of the event which “went viral.” “Since then” he recalls, “I’ve had the opportunity to work with various NGOs and human care organizations.”
He graduated from Caleb University, Lagos, sometime in 2023 with a personal determination to undertake visits to other states in Nigeria to “document different cultures and different people” and “misconceptions” about some of these places. One of the first states he visited was Kaduna State, Northern Nigeria, during the Eid Mubarak season. His pictures from Zaria, Kaduna, gives the impression that his trip was fulfilling, as the pictures tell the typical story of the season and convey the spiritedness of the celebrations during Eid Mubarak season: the rites of prayers (as faithfuls are seen with heads bowed in solemnity); the vibrancy of colours; the aloofness of children; and the excited flurry of the movements.
Eid Mubarak, Zaria; by Folajimi
Vurzie, on the other hand, “enjoys telling stories” through her craft, she says to me during our conversation. It’s not just about “making beautiful images but about preserving cultural identity and memory.” She was born in Kaduna and has lived in Kaduna for the most parts of her life and now works there as an accountant. What began in 2018 with taking pictures of her coursemates and her environments metamorphosed into a strong desire to document cultural stories, like the Chong Dovetail festival, one of the cultural festivals in Kaduna. “Being a documentary photographer means using my camera as a tool to tell real stories,” she beams. “I just want to tell real stories. It started as a hobby, still a hobby for me, even though I have monetized it now. I just enjoy taking photographs and I enjoy telling these stories of people.”
When I ask for her view on what being a documentary photographer means, she takes her time to reflect, as though rummaging through the catalogue of memories she has preserved through her lenses over the years. “I don’t know what being a documentary photographer means to others,” she says, finally. “For me, it means witnessing and just preserving stories. There are a lot of stories to be told, anywhere you look at, anywhere you go to. So, documenting these stories and preserving them, going beyond the surface of just capturing images. My camera becomes a tool, a bridge between people, generations, memories and all of that.”
In her collection of pictures from around Gamji Gate, Kaduna, it feels like you’re looking into the collective memory of a group of people as they go about their daily existence, doing banal things; like being en route to a destination on a bike with the bikeman wearing a bright-red puffer jacket; a delivery man is on one end of the frame, seemingly riding out of it; while in the background, a bunch of people are engaged in different activities at the entrance of Gamji Gate. Vurzie’s understanding of the need to preserve the existence of memories through photography immediately strikes one as important, especially as a citizen of a country where million-naira infrastructural works meant to provide economic stability for the masses come to ruins. Her works bear a sort of witness to the one-time existence of those institutions and facilities.
Prominent war photographer, Giles Duley, notes that “documentary photography has always come with great responsibility; “there is a sense of ethical responsibility when it comes to what we call documentary photography.” Documentary photography has always been bordered by ethics and rules, some of which are highly subjective. Documentary photography “is one of those genres of photography that deals a lot with ethics, because you’re constantly asking yourself, ‘who gets to photograph who and what is the line between consent and the candid photograph?” “So you can’t, in documentary photography, create scenes because what are you documenting? The things we created? No, the things have to happen and then we document them,” Onyekachi explains, with a knowing emphasis. Documentary photographers should photograph things as they are and should not be “contrived,” he says.
In 2024, Onyekachi won the Sony World Photography Awards, Nigeria, for his entry, ‘At the Salon’ where a schoolgirl is seen seated on a chair in a salon, He was also commissioned by The Republic in 2023 to take pictures around Nsukka for the essay, ‘Like a Compass Pointing to Nsukka’. His collections of pictures of Nsukka – his commissioned work for The Republic and his personal shots of Nsukka – tells you, unmistakably, that one of the mainstays of his craft is authenticity, so to say. His pictures are an apt unembellished condensation of the vicinity of Nsukka: the redness of the earth, vintage cars in front of age-old buildings, the shrubs of Ixoras around designated buildings and quarters, the mistiness of the hills; the fictional Aunty Ifeoma’s House, from Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, ‘aladuras’ praying atop mountain tops; and even the warmness of the atmosphere — you experience all of it as though you are physically there. And they sit perfectly within his frame.
A football match on Franco Pitch, Nsukka; by Onyekachi, for The Republic
Mary Slessor Hall, Nsukka; Onyekachi, for The Republic
Aunty Ifeomas House, Nsukka; Onyekachi, For The Republic
A View of Odim Hill by Onyekachi, for The Republic
Nearer, My God, to Thee, by Onyekachi.
Signage at the University Gates, Nsukka; by Onyekachi, for The Republic
“What I like to think of the work I do is, one, to show the beauty in the mundane,” he proceeds. “One thing people say about my photograph is ‘they look very ordinary, like I could be there’. That is one of my driving forces. I want my photographs to look very ordinary and which is also why over the years I’ve cut out editing from my process. So these days, most of what I do, I try to get it right in camera. And if I can’t get it right, I leave it. It’s just where I am artistically. I want the viewers to get the feel that this is the place they could be. I don’t seek to create something otherworldly or something ethereal. Another thing is to subvert what people think about things. Even if it is just one viewer that looks at the photographs and their opinions on something is changed.”
The question of consent is an issue that orbits documentary photography; does the question of consent exist or matter in the craft? In what form or state can a subject be photographed? Speaking on this, Onyekachi explains that the contention is “a very sticky area” because some genres of photography, like “street photography” which can be subsumed under documentary photography require no consent. “In street photography, there’s nothing like consent,” Onyekachi tells me. “When people bring the argument of ‘only photography people the way they would like to be seen’, and the thing is, if we were only photographing people the way they would like to be seen, there are so many visual documents of the horrors of the world that would not exist because people who have been subject to horror sometimes do not want to be. But now there’s a dilemma of at what point does a photographer stand up and move into the scene to change the tide of events? You say, ‘oh, this should not be happening. This is a grave injustice and I have to step in.’ So I cannot purport to say this is the right way or this is the wrong way to do anything. And I think these things eventually boil down to the individual.”
Folajimi did not instantly get comfortable with taking random shots of people in the streets for the fear that they may find it offensive, he reveals. “I was so scared that they would find it offensive,” and it took a while before the fear faded. But this fear helped him “pay special attention” to how he relates with his subjects. What has worked for him “is just to be human; to be more human than being a photographer” and he does this by trying to get a little “intimate” with his subject by establishing a form of connection between them. Nevertheless, “there are times where I would also take the images without making an interaction.” It comes down to maintaining the “dignity” of his subjects at every point in time, he reasons.
Some of the world’s most contentious documentary photography were photographs documenting the impact of war on civilians, especially on children, captured in undignifying state. For example, the Napalm Girl, the popular image of a Vietnamese child running down a road after a napalm airstrike on their village; Kelvin Carter’s photograph of a boy being stalked by a vulture; and Don McCullin’s photographs of the horrific impact of the Biafran war on Biafrans.
“There are ways you could photograph people and rob them of dignity and ways you can photograph people and imbue them with dignity,” Onyekachi points out. “For example, when people come across an accident and they make videos and pictures of accident scenes showing the deceased, posting them on social media, I find it reprehensible. I find it reprehensible because I don’t think anyone deserves to see their loved one in that manner and I also don’t think that it dignifies the person who has died, because I personally would not want to be put on the internet like that if I died violently. Now, in another instance, if it’s during a protest and a soldier shoots a protester and I capture that scene for some reason, my ethics for that particular photograph are different from when a person has violently died, an accident. When I take a photograph of a soldier shooting a protester, I’m not doing it to show the violent and reprehensible manner in which this person has died. I’m documenting it because it’s an indictment against the power that has committed that reprehensible act, not glorify the violence which that person has undergone because a photograph ultimately is a way of taking a moral position eventually.”
“I will not take pictures of my subjects in their vulnerable states,” Vurzie responds. For her, as a documentary photographer, there has to be “respect” and “empathy” for her subjects. “Sometimes you go on photo walks and there are people who decline the camera being pointed at them,” she says, and “you have to respect them and not take pictures.” The postcards from her recent walk around Kaduna come off as an exercise on how photographers can “imbue a person with dignity.” Her subjects are street hustlers around Bakin Dogo, Kaduna. Everyday folks who make a living by the sweat of their brows and young boys born into such drudgery. In her photographs, her subjects are seen pushing wheelbarrows; sitting in the sun with a POS machine, or under haggard stalls with baskets of onions; there’s also a young boy dressed in an oversized shirt eating from a plate by the road. But there is something miraculous about these pictures. Rather than the emblematic strain and despair common with the faces of street hustlers, Vurzie’s hustlers are jovial and receptive. Their delight is apparent as they smile at the camera. However you look at the pictures, beyond their daily labour, one can always see their humanity.
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‘Faces’ from Bakin Dogo, Kaduna; Vurzie, for The People’s Archive NG
Like the way Vurzie’s photographs of Kaduna’s street vendors help us come to terms with a different aspect of the lives of labourers and street vendors, documentary photographs usually bring to our focus things, details we do not ordinarily see, or notice. Many times, our attention span of things and events as they happen is fleeting. With visual documentaries, we are afforded a new lease of time not just to see but to evaluate the thing photographed at our own convenience. “I think the importance of documentary photography, regardless of anything,” Onyekachi begins, “is to show people things.” “That is the whole point — showing people things that they would ordinarily not pay attention to. Sometimes it’s things they know about, but you show them in a new way.”
Black American photographer, Dawoud Bey — a name that came up in my conversation with Onyekachi — grew popular for his documentary portraits of black Americans. He was preoccupied with challenging the way black people were seen in America. In a time during which blacks were victims of harsh and dehumanizing political narratives and racial stereotypes. Bey sought to subvert those narratives by reminding the world about “the fundamental humanity of black people.”
The use of documentary photography as a tool to upset narratives underlines Onyekachi’s current project. His ongoing project is a visual exploration of young Nigerians who are in romantic relationships. According to him, his goal is to confront the demonization of young people in relationships. “The project is about young people in relationships in Nigeria. It’s a response to” the demonization of “young people being in relationships.” The goal is to “subvert” the trope demonizing youths who are romantically engaged and to “show the reality of things.”
Earlier in the year, Vurzie won the camerAmore photo contest. Her award winning-entry for the contest, titled “Behind the Scenes at a Film Production” shows us the rigour and dedication behind the production of a movie. It is a monochromatic picture of what appears to be child actors on the set of a film production. And, even though monochromatic, you can sense the intensity of the sunlight on the skin of the subjects and the rigour that goes into the production of films. “I think documentary photographers play the role of a witness in society, both in the struggle and the beauty. And our responsibility is to preserve truth,” Vurzie introspects. And this truth may be something as visceral as a street vendor hawking strawberries through the streets of Jos.
Untitled, Jos; by Vurzie
The attraction of people to being photographed is something worth reflecting upon. It is one thing to photograph someone, it is another to be photographed. Seeing people’s reactions to their pictures is, in Folajimi’s words, “the most interesting part.” What induces this excitement for him is because their reactions many times reveal how people “interact with their own lives.” “I could take an image and have an intention behind it and someone is telling me something entirely different from what I had in mind,” he laughed, “while there are some more conscious to the fact that the image means more than just a good photograph of them.”
Talking about this observation, Onyekachi explains that “people see themselves differently from how they are,” and by extension from how the photograph captures them. On these occasions, when the photograph does not resonate with people’s expectations of what they look like, “they feel offended” at the dissonance. “On the flip side,” Onyekachi continues, “there are people who are not very charitable to themselves and then when you take a photograph of them, they find it so beautiful. They are amazed. And there are people for whom when you take a photograph of them, it conforms to their image of what is in their head.”
American photographer and journalist Ralph Hattersley was said to have suggested that we make photographs “to understand what our lives mean to us.” The origin of the statement may not be definitively known, but it is indeed true that photographs can aid our understanding of moments and details that culminates into our lives. Onyekachi’s unpresuming shots of Angel & Divine from his ongoing project seem like a confirmation of this: both of them appear relaxed, slightly tilted towards each other, with strong gazes on the camera. The colours of their outfits — Divine’s purple shirt and Angel’s sage green tie-front bandeau top — and the geometry of their faces seem to interact softly with each other. Technically, love is abstract and can’t be visibly captured, but Onyekachi’s Angel & Divine makes you recognize love as tender and colourful.
Good cameras and good gears aid good photographs, it is true; but a more fundamental truth is that good photographs are the products of the shrewd photographer’s eye. Renttowned French Photographer and ‘father of photojournalism’, Henri Cartier-Bresson said “it is an illusion that photos are made with the camera, they are made with the eye, heart and head.” So many moments, events and places unravel before us and the best moments deserving of being photographed — like Henri Cartier’s ‘decisive moment’ that produced works like the ‘Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare’ — can only be intuitively spotted by an artistic; it could be something as subtle as the synchronization of colours of the outfit worn by a group of women at a burial ceremony and the tent beneath which the women sit, somewhere in Enugu or the timely shot of the emergence of three girls (and two kids) in a small river, somewhere in Ogun Waterside, 2024 — three girls appear to have just emerged from the river after some moments in the water.
A Ceremony, Enugu Ezike, by Onyekachi
Take Me To The River, by Onyekachi
Vurzie’s award-winning shot for the “My Camera in Action” award appears as a perfect example for that sort of ‘detective moment’ shot that could only be intuitively recognized by a knowing eye. In the very candid shot, a guy in a tracksuit is captured mid-walk from an observer above as he walks through a sandy field, pocked with several imprints. One would see the shot and think about man’s endless motion and his transiency or journey through life. Vurzie took the picture from a bridge in Muritala Square, Kaduna, she tells me. “This is a polo field so I was watching them riding horses. Then I saw this guy coming from afar and I already pictured what I wanted to capture. So, I set my camera patiently waiting for him to enter the frame.” “That’s how I got this photograph,” she recollects.
Vurzie’s, My Camera in Action award.
One could hold similar sentiments for Folajimi’s “Everyday Scenes, Quietly Unfolding in Zaria, 2025.” Unlike Vurzie’s, in this shot there are three people appearing entirely oblivious to the camera’s presence. Two of the three strangers walking on the same path under a bridge but on the parallel sides of the road, both of them heading out of the frame, in the direction they both face. The third person on the top right corner appears to be negotiating his way down a steep side of the bridge.
Everyday Scenes, Quietly Unfolding in Zaria, 2025
For a clime like ours that has, for long, been a victim of poor representation and malignant narratives, the need to harness the power of documentary photography to shape our often narratives, to inform, and to immortalize our own realities incontrovertibly cannot be overstressed. Niyi Fagbemi’s 2023 coverage of the Ojude Oba festival in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, illuminates this point effectively. Although the Ojude-Oba festival has had a notable degree of national — and fairly international — popularity, this short documentary clip revolutionised the festival’s outlook, giving it a pop culture appeal and acceptance. The provision of support through local grants and funds to documentary photographers will go a long way in supporting the art and by consequence, strengthening the social and cultural outlook of the people and the society. Folajimi and Onyekachi stressed the problem of ‘financial constraints’ as one of the major stumbling blocks to the execution of their projects. “A lot of times, the trips and the projects are usually self funded. There are few local grants or opportunities for people to give you money to document a project they also believe in” Folajimi decried. He also stated other problems like “cultural sensitivity” and “bureaucracy” which hinder accessibility and documentation.
For years, scientists have speculated, rather fanatically, on the possibility of achieving immortality for mankind. Perhaps this puzzle began to resolve itself with the discovery of photographic principles, and became more clearer when, two centuries ago, Nicéphore Niépce, produced what is regarded as the earliest surviving photograph. During my conversation with Onyekachi, he said in passing that “all photographs bring out a slice of time and immortalize it.” So, Onyekachi’s young lovers, ‘Angel & Divine’ will forever be slumped into each other’s arm, lovingly; Vurzie’s ‘Strawberry Woman’ will always be on the side of the road in Jos, gracefully selling her strawberries; while Folajimi’s faithfuls from Zaira will remain frozen in their moments of glee and excitement. Anais Nin wrote, “we write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” Perhaps we take photographs to stay alive in the moment forever.
