On Openness, master poet Rumi once said:

‘This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor …Be grateful for whoever comes, for each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

These words, written over a thousand years ago, draw some parallels with the photographic approach of British-Nigerian photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi: “It's about the moments of the day and how you take it on, the more you become open to every moment, that’s when you begin to understand what life’s about. At least, that’s my claim.”

Akinbiyi was born in 1946 in Oxford, England, where his parents were students, and when he was four years old they returned to Nigeria. He grew up in 1950s Lagos, which at the time was a British colony. As a teenager he returned to England to attend boarding school, his journey eventually led him to Berlin, Germany, where he has been living for the last fifty years. “When you are moving up and down, like I was in the 50s and 60s, I found that you could either open up or close down.” He says, “In my case, I opened up.”

He shares short anecdotes from his own experience to emphasise this idea of receptivity. “I remember when I was in primary school in Lagos, my father would pick us up at a friend’s place. While waiting, I’d look through the National Geographic magazines and it fascinated me.” He ponders, “I think that was the beginning of my photographic path. Later on, in the 80s and 90s, I realised I was eager to learn, to look, to be open.”

With a career spanning over four decades, Akinbode Akinbiyi has amassed an extensive, and well organised, archive exploring the rich, dynamic textured social fabric of the urban landscape, and the people that inhabit the sprawling metropolises and quiet environments at the periphery of the big cities. 

There’s an inescapable rhythm embedded within Akinbode’s seemingly static compositions that evoke this feeling of timelessness, in the honest definition of the word. A photograph of a young woman laughing as she walks into the frame in Lagos Island, 2004 or a diagonal bird’s eye view of downtown Johannesburg almost a decade later, seem to be moving to a similar tempo. I wonder how his photographs are able to traverse this passage of time, “The common thread has been myself. I do understand and hear the different resonances coming across, but quickly I try to take it on. I just go with the flow.” Whether the setting is Bamako, Dakar, Khartoum or São Paulo, the same dose of serendipity and connectivity is applied. 

In a statement for his solo exhibition at Kunstverein Hannover, Akinbode describes this process of wandering: ‘Passers by are acknowledged, especially in the early morning hours. Voiced good mornings, the friendly nod of knowing, the beginning of the workday. The pathway, the pavement, the roads are essential passageways, laid out and carefully maintained, leading somewhere, the necessity of forward motion. The wanderer however disrupts this organic forward surge, from time to time completely standing still and turning around, looking back, taking in the view from another angle.’

“I try to be as spontaneous and intuitive as possible,” Akinbiyi, on practice and process, “This is a long term commitment. Everyday I try to expand it, the more you do it the more you’ll want to do it. You improve, but at your own pace.” Every piece of music has a particular cadence, determined by the maestro wielding the instrument. When developing bodies of work, as Akinbode has, spanning not only continents but decades, it is important to know when to go, be patient and become still.

Our conversation lands on the force that has kept Akinbode going in recent years, he shares his desire to further contribute to the photographic lexicon through photo books. In July 2024, he published a book titled Being, Seeing, Wandering with Spector Books. We revel in the nuanced approaches African photographers are taking in constructing narratives through published works. He mentions Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s I carry Her photo with me, and its scrapbook spiral binding, “It’s absolutely beautiful.”

Recipient of the 2024 Hannah Höch Prize - awarded for an artist’s lifetime achievements - Akinbiyi is exhibiting, at Berlinische Galerie,120 photographs from various series, addressing cultural change and social exclusion, and the impact of colonialism on social policy and urban planning. 

As a walking observer, I ask Akinbode about navigating, as he has described, the “intensity and density” of the cities he has photographed in. “If you are wandering, as I do, say in the rural areas or villages, sometimes you can walk and not encounter anymore, maybe one or two people. But in big cities like Lagos or São Paulo, all sorts of vibrations come across.

Some places are quite tense. There’s so much going on, all these new modes of movements. It is almost like a music score.” He says. “Sometimes, I will be walking, I will stop and look, and keep going. There’s been times where I wish I’d made the picture, so now I’ve become more perceptive.”

Perhaps, it is most fitting to liken Akinbiyi’s photographic process and output to a dance. There is a choreography to the wondering and wandering that occurs between him, the space and the present moment. Infinity can be found in the meditative stillness. There is a potential magic in spontaneous looking. Devoid of time, the wanderer steps to the rhythm of the everyday. Someone once said, a picture says a thousand words but in the case of Akinbode Akinbiyi, the photograph sings.