- By Chimezie Chika Francis
It is a common truth that digital technology looks towards the future, is progressive, and is, by its very attributes as a technological pursuit, an innovation geared towards continuous improvement in the quality of human life. In photography, for instance, the propensity towards innovation, or the imperative of it in digital technology, is supposed to improve the quality and detail of photos and thus enact all manner of novel expressions through which photography speaks to us. The movement from the first large boxy daguerreotypes in the 19th century to today’s seconds-capture photography in smartphones is a great example.
In a more pinpoint sense, digital innovation in photography has also scaled interdisciplinary creation and appreciation of photography. Photographers now have highly effective editing tools within reach of a button on their computers and smartphones, which subsequently makes the quirks of the photographer’s technique easier to achieve. Application tools such as Adobe Photoshop have become an endlessly amenable resource for the kind of multidisciplinary creatives emerging in the digital age.
These creatives have learnt to create hybrid art that cannot be easily held in a descriptive box, merging photography and drawing, or painting and the techniques of photography in unique and often surprising ways. Some of the world’s most remarkable practitioners of digital photography are increasingly expressing themselves in these modes; they are, in essence, leveraging several new applications to transform photos and sketches into digital art. This flourishing artistic digital revolution can be found in online galleries such as Saatchi, UGallery, Art Upon, Fine Art America, and others.
Nigerian multidisciplinary artist, Mercy Oduz Odukogbe, is one of those who uses the medium to bridge the gap between photography, drawing, and fine art. Her pictures have the same pasted quality as the kind of illustrations found in old elementary school English textbooks. Oduz’s negatives seem to have been bleached even further to take away all appearance of photographic verisimilitude. What is left is a kind of colour board of pencil-like drawings, firm yet delicate lines, the final appearance being of a light water-coloured ambiance or assuming a kind of crepe-like quality in the clothing of the figures in focus.
The nostalgic quality of Oduz’s art is decidedly afforded by the frayed quality that viewing these negatives evokes. The scenes captured and drawn often involve figures in motions of prayer, worship, adoration, or in a number of religious postures and activities that indicate that the environment is in a church. (There are other details herein that banks on memory or seem to allude to or accessorize the reason for these religious actions. We will come to these later.)
This is partly why many of Oduz’s photo-drawings seem to have a spacious quality, as if they are speaking of environments beyond what can be seen within the frame. It’s clear, indeed, that as in all such simple drawings or sketches, we are given space to imagine details into being as viewers, to imagine scenarios even. One of the pictures in this mold, titled “Big God,” shows a man in a striped suit spreading his arms out wide. We do not know if orange is the real colour of the suit, for the clothing or other less clear figures in the frame have the same orange tinge, likely due to the effect of the dichromatic negative which Oduz had drawn from. We can make out chairs, standing figures, limbs hanging halfway up, all these mean the picture is in motion, a congregation praising their God.
Big God by Mercy Odukogbe
Other church/worship-themed pictures show details that may help us understand their postures. The first, simply titled “Worship”, is an illustration of a woman with a hand raised in the air. Her eyes are closed, but we can see that she has a baby tied to her back, though much of the baby is obscured from view, except for one little foot peeking out from her wrapper. The question floats before us: Is she praying for her child?
Worship by Mercy Odukogbe
The next, “Heaven’s Messenger” is more enigmatic, surrounded by its more or less dichromatic palette. In the mass of orange, yellow, and grey, we can make out seated figures in the background and the sheer descent of a curtain. The main focus of the picture is a man bent down low in front of the seated congregation. He’s in a hooded sweater, which slightly throws off an immediate conclusion we might have that he’s a pastor. He seems to be in the middle of a demonstration, holding out a sheet of paper in that bent position. Taken as a whole, we realise that the illustration has an ingenious quality in the symmetry between the seated figures and the hooded man.
Heaven’s Messenger by Mercy Odukogbe
“Singing from the Depth” combines the illustrative qualities of “Heaven’s Messenger” and “Worship”. Here, a plump, bespectacled woman has a mic close to her open mouth. Her hand is upraised, and her face is tilted upwards. Her jacket is green, and the blouse underneath is grey. Taken together, we see in the figure an expression of great passion; the singing she is doing seems indeed to be coming from deep within her.
The power of these kinds of illustrations is their ability to illustrate actions without complication. It is what made those illustrated elementary readers of old so fundamental to the education of the child. Oduz’s technique here, of course, does not profess that same motive, but, positively, it achieves the same clarity, using not traditional painting methods but photography and Photoshop. It is, therefore, knowing Oduz’s technique that affirms her talent to us.
The illustrations that more pointedly replicate the nostalgic simplicity of Primary English readers are “Culture Display”, “Mom from Benin”, and “Before the Lord”. From the vantage of the nostalgic temperament I have spoken of, “Culture Display” shows vivid dexterity. The negative here is reduced to clearly etched lines marking out buildings, trees, perimeter fencing, a billboard, a canopied stage with blurry figures, and five figures magnificently dressed in Yoruba attire. It is possible that only four of the five are women, which would make the fourth woman the only one carrying a child on her waist. The light use of edgy bright colouring infuses the drawing with warmth and an air of festivity.
“Mother from Benin” continues the culture focus of the last illustration. Here, the lines are deep and unmistakable, and the colouring amplifies it: a woman in a wrapper garment, bedecked in beads (on her hair, neck, and wrists), is in a seated position while picking through something in a colourful plate on her lap. The other illustration, “Before the Lord”, has the intricate brickwork of a church altar dominating most of the frame: the ceiling, the stained windows in a crucifix shape, and the real crucifix itself below it. Down in the foreground, we find a priest reading out liturgy from the mass book, a couple in wedding attire, but the illustration shows their heads and upper torsos from the back.
Oduz’s art reveals the endless possibilities presented by technology, and in this case, photos become digital drawings, and figures previously having the verisimilitude of photos now acquire the lapidary appeal of textbook illustrations. The future will tell what more she does with this form.
Chimezie Chika is a culture journalist and writer of fiction and nonfiction, and a senior writer for Afrocritik. His works have appeared in or forthcoming from, amongst other places, The Shallow Tales Review, The Republic, Lolwe, Iskanchi Mag, Isele Magazine, Efiko Magazine, Brittle Paper, and Afrocritik. He was a 2021 Fellow of the Ebedi International Writer’s Residency in Iseyin, Nigeria. He currently heads the literature department at Afrocritik and is the Fiction Editor of Ngiga Review and currently resides in Nigeria.