Decades of photographing Lagos have taught me that a city reveals itself slowly. You photograph the same places repeatedly, and eventually you realize the camera is really recording time.
You notice the buildings that were there when you started and are now gone. You notice the ones that have survived everything around them. You notice roads widening, skylines rising, neighborhoods changing character, and familiar places becoming almost unrecognizable. Then you see that a photograph you took ten years ago has become a historical document.
When I started Eyes of a Lagos Boy, the idea was simple: I wanted to fill the internet with beautiful photographs of Lagos. I wanted to show the city as I saw it — energetic, complicated, colorful, beautiful and constantly changing.
Then I began looking backwards. I started finding old photographs of Lagos and wondering what those same places looked like today. What had disappeared? What had changed?
That curiosity became Lagos Then and Now, a project I started in 2023. Rephotography gave me a different way of looking at the city. I would find an old photograph, locate the exact spot, work out where the original photographer had stood, and try to recreate the image from as close to the same position and perspective as possible.
Sometimes the difference is dramatic. Sometimes, surprisingly, it isn’t.
One thing I noticed from sharing these photographs is how strongly people react to change. When trees have given way to buildings, there is often an immediate chorus of complaints. But when the “now” photograph is actually greener than the old one, there is rarely the same reaction. Maybe we don’t always miss the physical past as much as we miss the feeling of it. There is a natural human attachment to what is familiar — to the places we remember, the way they looked when we were younger, and the memories attached to them.
The photographs also generate conversations that go beyond photography. People bring their memories, opinions and sometimes their politics. The comment sections sometimes turn into arguments about what Lagos was, what it has become, who is responsible for the changes and what should happen next. Different political and social viewpoints can enter the conversation, sometimes leading to banter and, occasionally, unhealthy trolling.
I learned to see that as part of the life of the project. The photographs are not only documenting a changing Lagos; they are making people think about the Lagos they remember and the Lagos they see today.
That idea has concretized the way I photograph everywhere else. I carry that curiosity beyond Lagos — from Abuja to Brazil, New York, London, Barcelona, Antwerp, Marseille and beyond. I’m increasingly interested in the relationship between place, memory and the people who give a city its character. It is obvious my photographs are not really just about places. They are about time.
When I look through my older photographs of Lagos now, I don’t only see the city. I see myself, I see the cameras I used, the places I was interested in and how my eye has changed. Some photographs I barely noticed at the time, have become surprisingly valuable because the Lagos they captured has changed.
That is one of the privileges of photographing a city for a long time. You record things without knowing which ones will matter later.
A photograph of an ordinary street today may become someone’s reference point decades from now. A photograph of a building that seems unremarkable may become evidence of something that no longer exists.
This is why I’ve become increasingly comfortable with the idea of being a visual historian. I’m still a photographer. That’s where everything begins. But photography can do more than make beautiful pictures. It can document, preserve and help us remember. While sometimes, it can show us that what we remember isn’t quite how things looked.
Lagos keeps changing, I keep looking and shooting.
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