Photographers

Akinbode Akinbiyi (born 1946 in Oxford, England) is a British‑Nigerian photographer, writer, and curator whose work focuses on the everyday rhythms of rapidly expanding African and global megacities. Raised between England and Lagos, he studied literature in Nigeria, the UK, and Germany before turning to photography in the early 1970s as a self‑taught practitioner. His practice is rooted in walking—slow, deliberate movement through cities such as Lagos, Dakar, Kinshasa, Bamako, Cairo, Johannesburg, Berlin, and São Paulo—using these walks as a form of research and poetic observation.

Working almost exclusively with an analogue Rolleiflex medium‑format camera, Akinbiyi has developed a distinctive approach to street photography defined by attention to the unnoticed, the peripheral, and the subtle social structures that shape communal life. His images often reveal the sacred within the ordinary, capturing layers of meaning in the flow of urban space. He has described his work as a search for traces of childhood innocence and for moments of everyday grace within the complexity of contemporary cities.

Akinbiyi has participated in major international exhibitions and biennials, including documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, and has shown work in Berlin, Frankfurt, Dresden, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Havana, Chicago, Paris, and New York. His solo exhibitions include presentations at Martin‑Gropius‑Bau (Berlin), the Berlinische Galerie, Kunstverein Hannover, and other leading institutions. His series engage themes of migration, spirituality, postcolonial identity, and the constantly shifting architectures of urban life.

In addition to his photography, Akinbiyi is an influential mentor, editor, and curator. He has organized exhibitions for cultural institutions, co‑founded cultural centers and training programs for photographers in Africa, and led master classes and workshops across the continent. His awards include the Goethe Medal, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Hannah Höch Prize. Since the 1990s, he has been based in Berlin, continuing his practice of wandering, observing, teaching, and creating images that reveal the intricate poetics of global urban experience.