The young Nigerian photographer’s powerful and experimental imagery oscillates between fashion, beauty, and still life, celebrating the splendor and intensity of black skin.
Morgan Otagburuagu is an emerging artist in the African photography scene. This twenty-five-year-old virtuoso from Port Harcourt lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria. A former computer science graduate, he embraced photography at the age of eight when he received a camera as a gift from his family, which he used for all sorts of occasions. Since then, photography has become the obvious choice. His work celebrates the women of his continent, especially the iridescent beauty of their dark skin. His portfolio oscillates between fashion, beauty and still life, branching out into seascapes and the hidden sides of masculinity, with a play of props and a vibrant color palette.
Luminous Portraits
Morgan Otagburuagu considers art a way of life and is already proving to be a master of light. His style is a visual love letter to African women. As he puts it, that ebony skin is “the ultimate definition of beauty.” In his images, he shows them as sculptural, assertive, happy, thoughtful, elusive, modern, and thus encourages new generations to be proud of their skin. His credo is to change the narratives and destigmatize the black woman for the depth of her skin tone. He breaks the conventions and the diktat of the fashion canons conveyed by the magazines. He says he draws his influences from his mentor and compatriot Hakeem Salaam, but also from Irvin Penn, Richard Avedon, and Albert Watson. For him, photography is above all a story to tell behind the image. Morgan Otagburuagu thus offers a new look, both aesthetic and authentic, of these women with melanin-rich skin, like a powerful injection of positivity, adorned with a sumptuous surrealist fashion.
Nathalie Dassa
Africa – Niger
