Six O'Clock Market
Three winters spent arriving before the stalls opened, photographing the hour when the market belongs to the people who run it rather than the people who shop it. Shot on a Rolleiflex 2.8F, hand-printed in the Ikoyi darkroom.
Documentary & portrait photography — Lagos / Lisbon
Fella
Adeyemi
I photograph the ordinary hours of people's lives — markets at six in the morning, kitchens after service, the last light on a balcony in Surulere. Fifteen years, mostly on film, mostly on foot.
Selected work
Eight series, 2014–2025. Prints available on request.
Sunday Best
Portraits made in the twenty minutes after church, when everyone is still holding the version of themselves they dressed for. Natural light only, one lens, no direction beyond "stay where you are."
After Service
A year inside four restaurant kitchens, photographing the half hour after the last plate goes out. The exhaustion, the cigarettes, the quiet inventory of what went wrong. Made with the cooks' permission and their choice of which nights I could come.
The Long Shore
Eleven days walking the coastline west of the city with a 4x5 field camera and a borrowed trolley. A study of what the Atlantic leaves behind: fishing gear, foundations, half-built holiday houses, and the people who still work the water.
Measure Twice
Portraits of eleven tailors and the rooms they work in — the chalk marks, the pinned hems, the wedding orders stacked three deep on the rail. A series about patience as a profession.
Soundcheck
Two seasons of rehearsal rooms and empty venues, photographing musicians in the hour before anyone is watching. Published as a book by Kachifo in 2022, now in its second printing.
Hands of Ilaje
Close work on the hands of the men who build the wooden canoes still used along the lagoon. Shot over four visits, each one timed to a different stage of a single boat.
Nobody's Street
The first series I was ever happy with. Night streets photographed between midnight and four, when the city is technically still awake but nobody is out. Printed badly, kept anyway.
About
I was born in Ibadan and grew up in a house where the only camera was a broken Pentax that nobody could afford to fix. I bought my first working one at nineteen with money from a summer of night shifts, and I have not really stopped since.
I studied at the Yaba College of Technology, then spent six years as a staff photographer at a daily paper in Lagos — which is where I learned to work fast, to talk to strangers, and to be somewhere before anything happened. Since 2017 I have worked independently, taking commissions for editorial and portrait work and keeping one long-term personal project running at all times.
My work has been shown at the LagosPhoto Festival, the Addis Foto Fest, and the Photographers' Gallery in Lisbon. I teach a small documentary workshop twice a year, usually in August, usually for eight people.
Approach
I work almost entirely on film. A Rolleiflex 2.8F for the square work, a Mamiya 7 for anything that needs to be wide, and a 4x5 field camera for the landscape series. Film slows me down in a way that digital never did — twelve frames means I have to decide what I actually want before I lift the camera.
Everything is hand-printed in my darkroom in Ikoyi, on fibre paper, in editions of fifteen. I do not retouch beyond dust and contrast. If a frame is not right, it does not go in the show.
For commissions I shoot the same way: available light, no assistant, no stylist unless the brief demands one. I would rather spend three hours in a room with someone than twenty minutes with a lighting rig.
Now
Updated March 2026
I am currently halfway through a series about the ferry crossings between Lagos and the lagoon communities — the commuters, the boat hands, the twenty-minute journey that people make twice a day for years. It will be about sixty prints when it is finished, and I expect to be working on it until late 2027.
I am also printing the last of the After Service edition and preparing a small show for the autumn. If you want to be told when that opens, write to me and I will add you to the list.
Contact
Studio14b Adekunle Fajuyi Way, Ikoyi, Lagos
Second baseRua da Boavista 88, Lisbon
Emailiamfellaphotography@gmail.com
CommissionsEditorial, portrait, and long-form documentary. Prints from any series on request.
Reply timeUsually within two days. Studio visits by appointment only.