Threading Ephemeral

Ekimogun, for the ones who dwell in the forest.

Reflections on research as artistic/archival practice

When I first began my research fellowship, I planned to immerse myself deeply in the history, physical trends and threads of textiles encountered across a vast history of ‘West African’ studio photography. Looking back at my introductory blog is now deeply humbling and close to my heart as I see how these initial questions led to even more questions that I am keeping with me: as seeds that will continue to grow into and feed the next phase of this lifelong research of ephemeral, lineage, visual language, language felt in the body, words and wisdom gifted to me by the ephemeral. I look forward to experiencing these questions waiting for me to find them upon the glance of a photo, the touch of a photo, a conversation with an elder and young one. I look forward to the experience of stripping down these questions and getting into the womb/creation point of these questions that are simply waiting for me to find them and for them to find me in the simple passing of time! It is in this process of questioning and finding even more questions from these questions that I am possessed by life and life’s curiosity. The process of questioning and thinking through processes fuels me and all the things I find life giving in my sweet life!

“In this research I will embark on demystifying archival practices, through the invocation of griot traditions, the passing of a story through sound, poetry, and prose with the air that carries these stories from ear to ear.”

Oreoluwa’s Flickr Foundation introductory blog post, July 2025

Reading this quote from the “past” brings me a lot of ease and reminders of the prayers I placed in this fellowship. In my “past” declarations of what I would embark on, I can proudly say that the passing of a story through air, found photographs, the images brought to me via Flickr’s collection, and all of the conversations held within the last 7 months gifted me with the gift of remembrance and action.

I initially did not want to start my project as a “family archival project.” Avoiding this framing from the jump was a good idea in theory…. As having more broader interests allowed me to find more topics of interest that ultimately fed into me having new eyes to witness the prayers and movements being orchestrated by my ancestors and witnessing them present myself to myself, by guiding me to photographs never seen within my family’s extensive archive across relatives homes. I love them so much for showing me just how much my love for fragments, frames, stories, history, and Sankofa traditions have always been embedded in me.

Fellowship Output: threading ephemeral: act one

In the short film I created, threading ephemeral: act one, there are two main narrators, my father Bernard Akinyode and Big Daddy Dipo. This piece is a peek inside the many ways research, poetry, print, photo, material and immaterial meet and merge to tell a nonlinear story of the role images and imagemaking have been embedded in my blood.

It was important for my father to be the opening narrator as he is one of my favorite storytellers and a frequent star in my work. I give reverence to him deeply in my lineage of becoming an image and filmmaker as he documented much of my family throughout the last 30+ years. Whereas Big Daddy Dipo, who I introduced in the first blog post, is one of my oldest living elders on my mother’s side and fellow image-maker and archivist. In my scanning ritual video, threading ephemeral: act one, my father narrates a story of an ancestor of mine who was significant to photo history in Ondo Nigeria. As he narrates this, scans of my father’s father, Baba John Ojo Akinyode imaged by this special ancestor flash across the screen along with family archives of my father, myself as a baby, my siblings, and mother. Shortly after this introduction by my father, in the piece I ask Big Daddy Dipo to translate one of my father’s favorite songs, Ondo Amanuyi by Dhortune, a song uplifting, honoring, and poetically praising people from Ondo, Nigeria. As this narration continues, I begin scanning materials within my archive: archival risograph prints I made from zine and book clippings from a trip I made to Detroit’s Black Zine Fair in August 2025 (with risograph support from Neta Bomani); images and digital negatives I made from public archives, family archives across the last year, along with scans of my own personal photography and printed work. In this ritual of compilation I am observant of the ways my work, my father’s work, and ancestors’ work have always been speaking with and to each other.

In this observation and curation, I am reminded to continue this conversation with the living and the dead.

As my ancestors would have it, so much of my work and stewardship is deeply embedded in their trust of me to carry their stories with me and to share within our family. This research fellowship has in fact always been about us/them/us! I quickly learned during my fellowship that zooming into something more regionally-specific and personal would allow me to trace more information connected to ancestral ephemerality. What I did not know was that I would find out just how connected my families on my maternal and paternal side have contributed deeply to my obsession with the past, specifically within archives and image making. Through this restriction of research by location I have concluded this fellowship with even more questions and as a self-appointed ‘curious cat.’ This is deeply pleasing.