But not so many people go into photography and documentary photography to be precise. However, most people prefer painting to photography. But one man decided to do his thing his own way and not move with the crowd. This man is none other than a Nigerian born and USA based  Dr. Olusegun Fayemi.

Olusegun Fayemi is an Associate Professor of Clinical Pathology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York whom his passion for Africa and photography has made him an international figure. He is an experimental artist who majors in documentary photography.

He has been a photographer for more than thirty years and has travelled to more than twenty countries in Africa and the Carribean.

Fayemi started by taking pictures of nature, waterfalls, trees during his travels and later decided to concentrate on just photographing people. He has exhibited in several galleries in different countries and have another exhibition of photographs and fine art digital painting tagged “Eloquent Narratives” planned to be shown at the Quintessence art Gallery, Falomo Ikoyi Lagos from October 18 to November 19 2008.

He also has three books to his credit apart from his numerous pictures. The first which is out of print; Balancing Acts: photographs from West Africa was written in 1992 while the second and third books ; Voices from Within: photographs of African Children and Windows to the Soul: photographs celebrating African Women were written in 1999 and 2003 respectively.

Voices From Within according to him was inspired by the misconception of the Western world about Africa. The Western world, he said believe that Africans are poor, miserable and wretched.

For this reason, Fayemi, the medical doctor turned photo-artists produced this book not only to prove them wrong, but to also show them that Africans are living their lives how they know best.

This artist has been doing dark room work for some time and also gave lectures at various institutions. He believes that photography is not an easy task as it takes ability and patience to understand one’s subject.

He however, never attempted to steal photo shots through the use of zoom lens, rathe he has a guide he pays whose job is to convince people for their pictures to be taken.

When digital camera was invented, Fayemi who is a conservative person continued with his old method of black and white pictures.

Things however changed when three years ago, this renowned artist resorted to using digital camera, printing them on his computer and applying any colour he wanted. He believes that digital photography has endless possibilities and few limitations and that in the nearest future, the traditional film technique will be extinct due to globalization and computerisation.

The question then becomes; why aren’t there more documentary photographers in the country? To this poser, he opined that “In as much as there are some up coming artists, I think they should intensify efforts and find out the secret of Fayemi’s success.”

However his consuming passion of photo-documentary, Fayemi  still practices medicine full time due to what he calls time management. I think people should focus on a particular thing and do it well.

Explaining why he has done so well in this new passion, he said that he  did not go into taking pictures of anything that comes his way, rather he concentrated on people and did it perfectly well enough to be famous.

What is worth doing is indeed worth doing well. Those days are gone when artists are relegated to the back ground; people now value works of art more than it has been before. Most wealthy people boast of the number of art works they have in their collection and artists are more or less celebrated all over the world.

At the same time, parents and even the government have major roles to play in this new development. People with talent should be sponsored and parents should encourage their children with artistic talents to go after their dreams.

However, the beauty of the planned show for Quintessence Gallery and the achievement of Fayemi’s documentary undertaking lies in the fact that he did not only document his pictures but tried very hard to use this medium of photographic art to change a peoples’ negative perception of another race.

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