Valentine Ollawa
Semifinalist
Valentine Ollawa (born Lagos, Nigeria; lives Houston, TX) earned a BS in Behavioral Neuroscience from the University of California, Riverside. He worked as a management consultant and client services professional for over a decade before beginning his photography career in 2021. Inspired by his upbringing in Nigeria, where he witnessed the long-term impacts and cultural tensions due to colonial institutionalization and the disenfranchisement of ethnic communities, Valentine uses photography to explore how cultural resilience shapes the identities of communities. Focusing his lens on the everyday lives of working-class and marginalized communities, he uses photography to amplify social narratives that explore humanity at the intersection of cultural identity and institutionalism. He draws from the realities of daily life and the richness of his subjects’ environments, inviting viewers into a world that challenges the perception of identity and institution, offering a symphonic expression of ‘daily living as acts of resistance.’
Statement from the Artist:
Valentine’s practice is rooted in black-and-white photography as an artistic language to convey the past within the present, an act of reclaiming the narratives that once were. His work has been exhibited at the Avondale Art Center, Atlanta, GA; Houston Center for Photography, TX; and Rusha & Co. Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. He has participated in the Magnum Foundation workshops in Paris and the Magnum Foundation partnership with The Houston Center for Photography, for which he was a scholarship recipient. He was selected for CENTER’s Review Santa Fe Photo Symposium 2024 and is a semifinalist in the Print Center’s 99th ANNUAL International Competition.