Written and transcribed by Nikhita Samala

Can you tell us a bit about your ongoing project It's All In My Head? It seems as if your Nigerian heritage is a large influence on your work. What parts of your heritage and culture inspired this work and what have you learned about yourself as an artist through the creation of this work?

It’s All In My Head is an ongoing multimedia project that explores the coping mechanisms of survivors of terrorism and extreme instances of conflict and cruelty. The project aims to raise awareness about the need for psychosocial support for survivors of atrocities, that would help improve their mental health and wellbeing. I began working on the project in 2018 and one of the things that inspired me to start the project was because of my interactions with people who were living in Internally Displaced Person’s Camp, they are often called IDPs, and in realizing that some of them were people who had lives and who had everything going for them. A lot of these people I have spoken to before where people who were living in the northeastern part of Nigeria from Adamawa and Borno State and had to flee their homes because of the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency.

I watched this documentary about a Syrian refugee living in Jordan and how he didn’t want to go to school because he was traumatized by the things he had seen when he was living in Syria, and how psychosocial support and counseling was able to help him back into school. That sort of made me think of what happens to the people here, some people have many stories and it just made me wonder what was going on in their mind. At the time I had been in talks with people who had lived in Borno and lived in Internally Displaced Person’s Camp, and I started to ask them questions about how witnessing this terrorist activity and the loss of the lives of their family members and properties affects them. So I started with that and as I continued to work on the project it dawned on me that in different parts of Nigeria we have different types of crisis and acts of extremism that take place almost on the yearly basis and happens in different parts of the country.

This project has changed me. The reason I started photography was because I thought photography could be used as a tool to inspire change, raise awareness, drive social change, and get people to demand more. That was the goal I had in 2017 when I decided to learn about photography. I still stay true to that goal. In Nigeria we say “Change begins with you and I”. I might not be a politician, I might not be in the place of the public eye, but I could use my work to shed light on issues that need to be acted on, not just talked about. This project is really inspired by my need or desire to be a part of the change I want to see in my society.

I noticed that each image in this series is followed by very personal journal entries. What was your intention with adding these entries alongside the images?

When I started the project the types of the things people told me, I knew that these weren’t to be treated as captions. If you look at how text is presented in photojournalism or documentary projects, the text is usually presented as captions. I felt that “No, these people have gone through too much to reduce their experiences to captions. There has to be a better way of presenting it.” In 2019, I tried out presenting excerpts of our conversations as a separate image. Apart from the fact that people view these images, I also want people to take time to read their stories because each person’s stories differs from the other person and the way it affects them is also different. It’s very important that people don’t just engage with the images but also engage with their stories. Reading the text is the direct way for you to hear from them.

What projects are you currently working on? Can you tell us a bit about your next step?

I’m still working on It’s All In My Head. I’m also working on a project called Unboxed which looks at masculinity as it relates to the outward appearance of men. It is a project I started working on in the studio but now I am going out of the studio and will begin working on the project working in different parts of Nigeria, but still keeping the same visual approach. For me now I see the projects has a cultural and historical relevance. It’s not just a trendy project but I also want to look at how men looked in the pre-colonial and post-colonial era in Nigeria. I am sort of taking a break from my project, “It’s All In My Head” until I resume it again sometime this year, because it can be very heavy working on the project and I worked on it for a long time last year.

Describe your creative process in one word:

I like to observe my environment and draw inspiration from my environment. I get inspiration from asking questions and wondering why is this like this or this like that.

If you could teach a one-hour class on anything, what would it be?

Part of the creative process: taking time to build oneself. I would talk about where I started and where I am and how I’ve been pushing myself to go even further. I don’t like to talk just in terms of the creative aspect, but some day-to-day real life things like some of the harsh realities that come with being a creative - the good days, the bad days, the really down days, the inconsistency or uncertainty that comes with doing this work.

What was the last book you read or film you saw that inspired you?

I watched Set It Off. It’s an old movie with Jada Pinkett, Queen Latifah and two other amazing black actresses. I loved how down-to-earth they were, it is an oldie but a classic. I generally like to watch movies because it reminds me that I want to go back into acting at some point in my life, but also in terms of composition and stories. It also influences the way that I see, movies have a great role in this. I genuinely watch movies sometimes just for aesthetics, because I somehow apply the things I look at in my own work.

The last book that I read was An Image of Africa by Chinua Achebe. Everything that Chinua Achebe spoke of is what is going on in Nigeria and it is sad because he wrote it twenty years after independence. When I was reading the book I was thinking “He must be so sad” because everything that he spoke about are things that are still happening.

More of Etinosa Yvonne’s work can be found on her website.

Listen to the full interview below.