The Fashola Years: A photographer’s odyssey
Hard work pays, and this can be said of Lukman Olaonipekun, the personal photographer to the immediate past governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN). Lukman, popularly called Lukesh, went into photography by coincidence. He experimented with the use of photography when he borrowed a camera to take photographs of his sister’s wedding some years ago.
As an undergrad in the polytechnic, he earned some money for himself by taking photographs of his fellow students. Mother-luck smiled on him, and he became the personal photographer to the Onigbongbo Local Government Chairman in Ikeja in 2003. He was to become, too, photographer to Babatunde Fashola.
He recently had his solo exhibition on photography based on his books of the former governor. One of the books, The Fashola Years and Years of History, contains 339 pages with 16 chapters, with a foreword written by the first executive governor of Lagos State, Alhaji Lateef Jakande, which examines security, health, education, housing, environment, transportation, tourism, power, law and order, agriculture, infrastructure, legislature, governance, statesmanship, etc.
The exhibition, “Eyes of History”, accompanying The Fashola Years, is a sequel to the earlier photo-book,Babatunde Fashola: A Story in Photographs, with its exhibition entitled “Lagos: Being and Becoming”.
One notable image in the book was when the former Lagos governor confronted a senior military officer who broke the traffic law at CMS in Marina, Lagos, a testimony to the social re-engineering and governance in Nigeria.
Of course, Fashola never, for a day during his tenure, broke the traffic law. He, indeed, walked the talk. The subject is the governor and the officer; and the form are intrinsically the spontaneity of the photographer’s presence of mind, or what the critic calls the timeless moment. This is representational of the challenges of the military submitting to civilian authority. But there are other photographs: of the bus mass transit that is attempting to solve the historical Lagos ‘go-slow’; of interventions in agriculture, housing, global warming and erosion prevention, engineering involving bridges, light railway transportation, aesthetics as in the beautification of parks and gardens, reclamation and reconstruction of canals, interchanges, etc.
Of course, Fashola never, for a day during his tenure, broke the traffic law. He, indeed, walked the talk. The subject is the governor and the officer; and the form are intrinsically the spontaneity of the photographer’s presence of mind, or what the critic calls the timeless moment. This is representational of the challenges of the military submitting to civilian authority. But there are other photographs: of the bus mass transit that is attempting to solve the historical Lagos ‘go-slow’; of interventions in agriculture, housing, global warming and erosion prevention, engineering involving bridges, light railway transportation, aesthetics as in the beautification of parks and gardens, reclamation and reconstruction of canals, interchanges, etc.
According to Tam, Fiofori, curator of “Eyes of History”, the photographer … brings to us sights of history, culture, lifestyles and landscapes. He has documented the immediate past executive governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola, in such a compelling manner. The books are a visual representation of contrast and change from both an aesthetic and physical points of view. His pictures allow the viewer to enter into the privacy of the governor in rarely seen moments, including lonely late hours, tender interactions with the populace, etc.”
In in Lukesh’s “Eyes of History”, you would find fragments of moments captured in the Fashola Years as he went round Lagos State, capturing, among others, aerial photography of Makoko water community on the Lagos Lagoon, a rustic fishing community; the housing scheme in Lagos, the dug-out canoe, the Lekki-Ikoyi Link Bridge taken at sunset, the Third Mainland Bridge, the Eyo Masquerade, the Badagry drummers, the Lagos Carnival, etc.
“The Eyes of History”, as an exhibition, consists of 40 photographs but descriptive enough as to tell the photographer’s story. This is an everyday documentary taken in the course of Governor Fashola’s Years.
Thus, Lukesh’s image relieves us of the burden of time as memory fades in what Fashola Years was all about, for with time, it is history as recorded and distilled that is remembered and venerated. As observers, we will through Lukesh’s images become either subjective or objective in our remembrances of the changes in Lagos.
Thus, Lukesh’s image relieves us of the burden of time as memory fades in what Fashola Years was all about, for with time, it is history as recorded and distilled that is remembered and venerated. As observers, we will through Lukesh’s images become either subjective or objective in our remembrances of the changes in Lagos.
Olaonipekun, who has participated in a number of solo and group exhibitions and has won several awards, attended the London School of Photography. He is a member of the Photojournalists Association of Nigeria and World Photography Association.
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