In “3 Generations,” Shegun Oseh shows the beauty of ancestry

Art imitates life, some say it is the other way round. However, something for certain is that art reflects the times, and is always a great vehicle to pass across messages with depth. If you juxtapose the rhythm of life, with its stunning silence at the end of it, perhaps it might paint a picture of life’s continuity in your mind or it might just look like Shegun Oseh’s ethnographic photographs.

The multimedia auteur creates a striking commentary on life’s cycle, using a simple side view of an aged woman standing akimbo with her hand on her daughter’s hair as she twists it into knots. Her daughter, in turn, is doing the same thing to a younger child seated on a stool and resting on her knees. The child, too, keeps a straight face as she weaves the hair of a plastic doll. The image tells a thousand stories, but all of them dwell on the idea of time and being.

While this writer might settle for the indigenous practice of braiding hair by the maternal side of a Nigerian nucleus home, the younger child’s inclusion casts a futuristic halo on the fleeting nature of life. If anything, the child’s inclusion and her action of braiding a doll’s hair complement the idea of life’s baton of responsibilities tailor-sized with aspiration being handed down to every single generation.

Minus a profound central theme, the entire visual matches in terms of hue, shimmering in earthy browns, reds and yellows. The warmth of the image might suggest the vibrance nature of life, but barring any over-simplification it generally just pops the entire image into better view. The sharpness of the image and high contrast emphasizes the beauty of dark skin, a notable attribute of Oseh’s professional photography. If the saturation is much to be considered, it might have caused a little damage to the entire composition, as the colours bleed out in the background. Nonetheless, the photograph radiates with raw emotion, vibrance and colour-coded tension.

Above all the pleasures of Oseh’s striking editorial portraiture, the photographer’s post-production lighting creates some discord by casting a shallow depth of field, harshly distinguishing the subject in the frame. For all artistic intent, this could also be a silent rebellion by Oseh to create photos that feel like traditional paintings, intentionally bleeding out colours and over-exposing portions of the frame, to lay emphasis and express freely.

A child, ultimately, becomes the parent — and Oseh’s powerful photographic commentary muses beautifully on the subject. The photos remind one of Ghana’s celebrated artist, Carlos Idun Tawiah’s collections, especially in photo-works like his much-revered “Obaa Sima” where he documents the art of hair braiding in Accra. Set in Nigeria, the reality of non-existent number-plates on the local yellow-and-black transport tricycles, locally called Keke Napep, parked by the roadside, captures the notoriousness of commercial nerve centres like Lagos where such is a common spectacle.

In some of his other works, Segun Oseh has presented himself as an eclectic auteur, as his monochromatic obscurantism sticks out in “Love Under The Umbrella”, and his patient curiosity blooms in the mid-toned wonder of “Time Will Tell”. Now, in “3 Generations”, he stretches his elegant storytelling and ethnographic curation with a complex observation of motherhood, time, and meaning, and his distinct-but-underwhelming digital representation of the concept(s).

Segun Oseh is not just a thinker, but his thoughts are as sharp as his camera’s aperture with regards to digital photography. Oseh has carved his niche in the African photography scene, for several years, with his works having been exhibited at Nicoleta Gallery, Germany; Thomson Gallery, Switzerland; Casa del Arte Gallery, Palma; and Fox Yard Studios, Suffolk.