Photographs as Replacement in West African Traditional Religion The Centre for Creative Arts, Cultures and Engagement (CREATURE)

CREATURE Lab is an on-demand laboratory to pitch and test ideas for further research development. It aims to provide a collegial platform to rehearse and/or seek feedback for a research presentation, practice, and publication. It brings together a researcher and participants to explore a research idea and/or project through show and tell. The interactive lab is decided for the presenter to experiment a preconceived project for further study and/or examine matters related to research development and collaboration.

In this CREATURE Lab, Adeyemi Akande presented and invited participants to respond to part of a larger-themed study on Spirituality in Traditional West African Art & Architecture.

This study explores the trans-dimensional nature of photographs as a medium of communication between the physical and immaterial worlds. It brings to the fore the use of photographic prints, not only as a medium for trans-spatial movement of energies in traditional West African rituals, but also as material replacement for the individual or object recorded by the print. It highlights the early tensions between traditional sculpture and photographic prints in a cultural and religious context while showing how religious orders in the region adjusts standards and canons to accommodate technological innovation.

As traditional religion negotiates the ever-blurry boundaries of reality and alter-reality, this study assesses the extents of trans-dimensional engagement through photography while challenging the pressing problem of evidence in this area of inquiry.

Adeyemi Akande is a Senior lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies at the School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University. He is an experienced art and architecture photographer, who is keenly interested in the use of photography in the material and spiritual cultures of traditional societies in West Africa. He has had several photography exhibitions and projects in West Africa, including Reimagining Benin Bronzes. Adeyemi was 2020 Yates fellow to Warburg Institute and 2023 Leonard A. Lauder Senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Arts, Washington DC.