Since 1982, Akinbiyi has returned year after year to Bar Beach, a stretch of land along Lagos’s Victoria Island. His prolonged engagement with this space has resulted in a lyrical stream of tranquil images that testify to the spiritual and social significance of public life along the Atlantic shoreline. Titled Sea Never Dry, the series offers a poetic rumination on the passage of time, giving shape to solitary and collective practices that sustain, and those that inevitably change. “My primary aim is simply to wander, as freely and as unencumbered as possible,” Akinbiyi muses. “The notion of serendipity comes to mind, literally going with the flow. Certain constellations draw me in, call to be photographed.”
Gallery label from New Photography 2023: Kelani Abass, Akinbode Akinbiyi, Yagazie Emezi, Amanda Iheme, Abraham Oghobase, Karl Ohiri, Logo Oluwamuyiwa, May 28, 2023–September 16, 2023