Uche James-Iroha

James Iroha Uchechukwu was born in 1972 in Enugu, Nigeria. He studied sculpture at the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria and graduated in 1995. A year later, he continued study in photography that is now is current profession. He cofounded Depth of Field (DOF), a collective of photographers and painters working to promote photography and to improve the perception of photographers and their art in Nigeria. In his diverse work, Uche fuses the creative language of imagery with the documentation of everyday reality while addressing wide-ranging issues from economic imperialism to the brutal relationships, which exist between races, social class and gender. Uche’s approach is largely construction and deconstruction of the visual plane: trying to find the relationship and the workability between two- and three-dimensional designs. His series of photos Fire, Flesh and Blood (2004) got the public’s attention because of its documentary character as well as its artistic mix of colorful and smokey close-ups. In 2005, he received a price on the African Photography Encounters in Mali for his work.

Emeka Okereke

Emeka Okereke, born in 1980 in Nigeria, is a visual artist and writer who lives and works between Paris, Berlin, and Lagos. He was exposed to photography in 2001 while he was a member of the Nigerian photography collective, Depth of Field (DOF). In 2008, he received his MA in Multimedia from the National Superior School of Fine Arts of Paris. Presently, his works oscillate between diverse mediums. He employs mainly photography, video, poetry and performative interventions in the exploration of the central theme of “borders”. His works grapple with the questions of exchange and coexistence in the context of various social-cultural confluences. Another aspect of his practice lies in project organizing: coordinating artistic interventions, which promote exchanges cutting across indigenous and international platforms. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of “Invisible Borders: The Trans-African Project”, an annual photographic project that assembles up to ten artists from Africa to embark on a creative journey by road, across national borders in Africa and recently extending to Europe.

Pierre Crocquet

Pierre Crocquet de Rosemond was born in 1971 in Cape Town, South Africa. He grew up in Klerksdorp, a conservative farming and mining town. He graduated in Finance at the University of Cape Town in 1991, and moved to London where he worked as a chartered accountant for seven years. Then, he left the Finance sector to study Photography at the London College of Printing in 2000, after which he returned to South Africa. Crocquet’s early works depicted the dramatic changes of a post-apartheid society, where division was still evident. In the series Enter Exit (2008), he captured the realities of a small, isolated, and multi-racial community, whose daily lives have not escaped the effects of the sociopolitical developments in South Africa. Crocquet also reflected on harsh subjects such as childhood wounds. In his series Pinky Promise (2011), he managed to present the stories of victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse with great sensitivity.

Pieter Hugo

Pieter Hugo was born in 1976 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He first began to work in the Cape Town film industry, before embarking on a career in art photography. Blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction, his portraits can be read as a comment on identity, belonging, and self-expression in post-colonial Africa. One of his most widely known photographic series, The Hyena & Other Men (2007), consists of portraits of men in Nigeria who keep tamed hyenas, rock pythons, and baboons. Hugo’s extraordinary portraits of their liminal existence reveal a world of complex, codependent relationships, where familiar distinctions between dominance and submission, wildness and domesticity, tradition and modernity are constantly subverted. In Nollywood (2009), Hugo explores the multilayered reality of the Nigerian film industry including its local stars. Unable to photograph on actual film sets, he assembled a team of actors and assistants to recreate the stereotypical myths and symbols that characterise Nollywood productions. Hugo’s work is held in the collections of several museums and is critically acclaimed around the world.