The latest iteration of “New Photography,” at MOMA, situates contemporary life in the Nigerian city as a constant but lively negotiation between the violence of history and the demands of the present.

Archived copy: https://archive.ph/vw0p9

Selections from Karl Ohiri’s ongoing series “Archive of Becoming” take a similar interest in reconciling past and present. For the series, Ohiri printed digital images from negatives discarded by commercial photo studios in Lagos; the resulting images, blooming with lichen-like discolorations, bear the traces of a bygone era of analog photography and record the lives of everyday citizens, transformed now by the gaze of history.