By Henry Akubuiro
Increasingly, photography, in contemporary times, has morphed into a sublime storytelling genre for the venturesome photographer whose art goes beyond the routine of capturing cheerful and sorrowful moments of clients, friends, relatives and other momentous occasions for wider audiences. Temilade Adelaja, the author of Behind the Viewfinders, in this book, finds joy in images analogous with realities. These are not phantasmagorical.
The melding of photography with poetry, for the artist, is meant to deepen her audience’s deconstruction of art. It makes the message behind the offering more vivid and the messenger steps away from the corridors of virtuosity. As a communication medium, photography and words yoked as a thematized literature tend to towards visual and cognitive stimulations.
Mark Brion, writing on “Powerful Storytelling through Photography”, has argued: “Ninety-nine times out of one hundred, photos can create a sense of place, personality or emotion more clearly and quickly than the written word. That’s why we are drawn to stories that include photography – the images powerfully confirm and expand upon what we discover in the text.”
Temilade Adelaja’s Behind the Viewfinder (stories and poems of Visions) ends credence to Brion’s assertion. The poet achieves a remarkable fear in this slim collection: a cosmetic makeover of words in motions. This isn’t as easy as flying a kite at Onikan Stadium. The photographs featured in Adelaja’s Behind the Viewfinder derive from painstaking, on-field experiences captured in lenses across Nigeria. It’s an ingenious work of eclecticism reflecting a wanderlust spirit in search of gems in sunny and cool climes as she attempts to immortalise vistas, anxious moments and sundry moments with clicks and flashes.
Professionally, Adelaja functions as a photographer-reporter whose primary responsibility is to capture moments in words and visuals for her audiences. She was inspired to write Behind the Viewfinder by her numerous photographing and filming adventures for her personal archive or commissioned work. For her, achieving the perfect shot often hinges on her current perception of the scene and the story she believes it can convey. “I firmly believe in the power of storytelling. It allows me to delve into my creativity and offers readers my interpretation of events,” she writes on the preface. Basically, Behind the Viewfinder is a thematized literature exploring poetry and travel writing.
The poet enriches her verses with nuances in this collection. The culinary symbols are magicked into majesty in “Cry Me a River”, as she deifies onions, a vegetable that brings tears to our eyes and joys to our souls. “In every dish, its taste divine, a culinary marvel through time,” she echoes. The image of onions is used to illustrate the poem.
Social issues are recollected in the collection, like in “Political Procession”, where the EndSars protesting police brutality rocked Nigeria in 2020. Deploying prose poetry, the poet tells a simple story of how Nigerians youths, disgruntled with the system, took to the street to demand the disbandment of the anti robbery squad (SARS), which made every Nigerian youth a suspect and killed many extrajudicially. The poem recollects the ugly scene at Lekki Tollgate in Lagos State, where the protesters barricaded the road, making it impassable for road users.
She cherishes capturing a significant moment in the protest as a man bared his back and a protester painted “End SARS” on his back while others cheered on. “Capturing that image was profound,” writes the poet, hoping that it would, one day, find its place in a museum commemorating the landmark moment when Nigerian youths spoke in unison against oppression and yearned for freedom. She labels it a revolution – “a fight for our fundamental human rights to move freely without fear of oppression, robbery, or mistreatment by those entrusted to protect us.”
The poet’s lenses celebrate the diversity of nature. Her riverside images offer a pathway to getaway ambiences. In “Siesta in Makoko”, she recreates a visit to the Lagos riverine slum community, where she beheld a serene sight of a young man resting peacefully amidst the gentle lapping of water against the bamboo bed and warm embrace of the son, undisturbed. The picture used for illustration tells the story vividly, how in the midst of the lagoon, a Lagosian has found a paradise. Says the poet, “it was a moment of pure bliss and tranquility, a respite from the daily hustle and bustle”. As the water flows gently, it seems to carry away his worries, washing them downstream. The last two verses strike a note of hope in the midst of despair, encapsulated in nature.
The image in “My House is a Boat” captures a flooded house looking like a scene out of the floating village of Ganvie. The poem tells the story of the helplessness of man before the currents of nature. The deserted, half submerged house hitherto paid witness to blissful memories. Now, echoes of joy have become muted as shattered windows become a testament of destruction, the ephemeral of existence!
Another Makoko poem, “Silent Sentinels”, calls attention to the creativity and inventiveness of man – how logs of wood scattered on the face of the water serve as sentinels of the community’s resilience and resourcefulness. “Every log tells a story – of the trees that once stood tall in distant forests, of hands that felled them, and of communities that rely on them for survival,” she writes.
Lagos and its aquatic testaments are well documented in the collection. Also a city of bridges, “Casting the Net” celebrates fishing. The fisherman in the illustration is seen casting his net, seeking life’s essence. The poet possesses an unusual penetrative, interpretative gift to see beyond the veil of everyday life. Stories her lens can’t tell elaborately, her poetry complements with profundity. She deciphers that, with each gentle throw to cash a fish, the fisherman embraces life’s rhythm and, ultimately, nature’s symphony.
The poet’s narratives unbundle with hooks and urgency. “The Nigerian Batman” celebrates local vigilantes in Kwara State who have succeeded in policing the streets and winning the admiration of the locals for their efficiency and proactiveness.
The variety of photos in this poetry collection are arresting. From the red tomato pups in “The Market Place”, a poem set in the popular Mike 2 Market in Lagos, to the turbaned emirs in “Guardians of the Emir”, the Oyingbo Market in “Lagos Labyrinth”, the sea pollution in “The Beach’s Cry”, Ahaoda’s flooded streets in “Rising Waters”, the painting of Chibok girls under the Lagos bridge, white clothed Christians in the city, the conurbation of Lagos Island in “Colours of Lagos Island”, and the village greenery of Enugu in “Enugu Mother”, etcetera, the poet offers the reader a kaleidoscope of Nigeria views.
She does behold that by poeticising about life, toils, nature, religion, endurance, hustles, self-sacrifice, creativity, history, joy, tears, resilience, aspirations, and many more. Behind the Viewfinder is a work of brilliance laced with adventures. It announces Temilade Adelaja as a poet stamping her feet on thematized literature with alluring words that subtly delegimatises the grandeur esoteric poetry, in a way. Adelaja’s poetry is a joy to read with her unclogged diction and euphonies. Every verse tees off lovingly like a serenade, wooing the reader, leaving a whiff of seduction on its trail.