Rotimi Fani-Kayode

Rotimi Fani-Kayode (b. 1955, Lagos, Nigeria; d. 1989, London, United Kingdom) produced genre-defying photographs that speak to his experience as a gay African man living in England in the 1980s. He emigrated with his family to London in the 1960s, escaping civil war as political exiles. He relocated to the United States in 1976 to pursue undergraduate art studies at Georgetown University and continued his studies at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute. Returning to London in 1983, Fani-Kayode became an active participant in the Black British art scene, exhibiting at London’s Brixton Art Gallery, among other community-oriented spaces, and publishing his photography in magazines such as Ten.8 and Square Peg. In 1998 he became chair of Autograph (London, UK), a visual arts charity devoted to supporting photographic inquiries into race, rights, and representation.