Paul Abbah’s Search For The Perfect Image

To Paul Abbah, there is a story in everybody. His photography is an attempt to find those stories. That same curiosity extends into his work as a creative and music video director, where he continues to explore how ideas can be translated into movement. Across his work, Abbah returns to themes of youth, freedom, time, hope and the possibility of something beyond the world as we know it. There is a sense of utopia in the worlds he creates: colourful, imagined spaces that reflect the noise, questions and possibilities in his head. For him, photography is about giving form to the things he imagines and finding the image that can communicate them.

How did you get into photography?

I got into photography in 2019, my first year in university. I got my first camera in my first year at the University of Abuja, where I majored in sociology. At that time, I had to set myself up with my first camera. My perspective on how to really communicate thoughts and emotions came later, through practising and all that stuff. I ended up being self-taught, and I had a lot of time to myself. When the lockdown happened, I had to figure things out by myself. I guess the fact that you had to be by yourself during lockdown made everything that's happening now possible.

What was the self-teaching process like?

It was a whole lot of practice. It was a lot of practice and research. I guess I was extra curious. Whenever I saw an image, I wondered how the creator made it, how this image-maker was able to channel themselves to tell such stories and have such a perspective. My mind always wanted to know why and how, and that made it easy for me to want to experiment. I think curiosity kind of helps everything. It shapes everything in life when you try to find yourself and make something for yourself.

Being curious about all those things made teaching myself easy. And there was enough content online to help guide the journey. Whenever I needed a question answered, I would go to YouTube or Instagram. There was always an answer on the internet for the kind of questions I had starting out.

Looking back on the beginning of your journey, was there a particular moment or project that marked the beginning of who you are now?

Yeah, definitely. There was this one project with me and my friends. We went on a small road trip to Ushafa, I think it's around the outskirts of Abuja, and I titled that particular image Vemödalen. I had seen this dictionary online called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. The author had a very long list of emotions that we didn't know had names, and he had names for all those emotions.

Vemödalen was the feeling you would have when you take an image and know that someone else has shot something like this before. You know that you have the same composition, lighting, look, pose… everything. That was the feeling behind the title. PhotoVogue, which was Vogue Italia at the time, featured it as a Picture of the Day. It gave me clarity. It helped me know what it was I was meant to do.

Photography takes a lot of trial and error. How do you navigate the feeling of not getting things right the first time?

Oh yes, it does. I think, like all other things, it's supposed to take a lot of trial and error because you shouldn't necessarily be going for a perfect image or a perfect moment. You wait for it, and while waiting, you're going to make a lot of mistakes. If you're going to wait on something to align, you're going to have to really wait.

So you will need to try and try again and try again until everything aligns and all the pieces are in the right place. The uneasiness never goes away. Looking now, five or six years later, it's the same. Every single time you're asked to pick up a camera, a lot of things might not go well. But you're not here because it always goes well. You're here because you're trying to figure out what it's going to be like when it's finally done. It's the same curiosity that brought you here that will help you go through the whole thing.

Before taking a picture, what usually catches your eye? How do you know, "This is something I need to take"?

It depends heavily on where I'm at as a person when I'm making pictures. Right now, I'm making stuff that feels very much like where I'm at. I don't know if that makes sense. It's like, where are you in your head? What's life like for you right now? And where are you trying to take it to? Sometimes it's not just about where you are at; You're trying to tell a story, what does this really mean to you? Are you just taking it because it's a cool shot, a cool composition, or cool lighting? Or are you taking it because you really want to tell this story from your perspective? All those things are important.

You also work with music videos and cinematography. How do you bring abstract concepts to life?

Knowing how to use a camera kind of makes it easy. And then with videos, it's like all those ideas that you have, just imagine them in slow motion, basically. As a photographer, you get to capture just one frame. You have to tell all your stories in one frame. But when you're making videos, it's like you have two dimensions and you have to tell the same story, but you're going to get so many more frames. You can get 60 frames per second. You do with it what you can and make the best of it.

What is the process of making a set or coming up with a concept?

With videography, you have to put together a lot of images and references. You take this image because you're liking the colours from here. You're liking the styling from another image. You're liking the composition from another shot, and then you put all of that together to make the perfect video. I mean, it's more in demand with videos, so you're aiming for something higher. I would say that it's a lot more difficult trying to make videos than it is making images. It requires a lot more gear.

What's the difference between photography and videography for you, especially from an artistic perspective?

In my practice, the difference is basically just what's being recorded. For videos, an action has to really be carried out. If you want someone throwing their fists in the air like they're fighting, we would have to carry it out for a while to get that effect. But for photography, they have to make it look like they're doing this.

They don't necessarily have to do it. The difference is obviously in how much is required on the sets. For photography, not so much is required. Smaller sets can be made and the pictures will come out looking like the set was large or big. But in videography, the set has to be perfect. It has to be better. It has to be worthy because different formats are different.

When you're photographing people, how do you get them to embody a particular concept rather than just pose?

Whenever I think of an image or whenever I have an idea for an image, the person in the frame is as important as the idea, the set, and the styling. The image is nothing without the person in it. So I usually plan around the person. Whenever an idea comes to me, I also think about what model or what friend of mine embodies that look.

If you go through all the images, those people are just in their elements. It's something they would do on a normal day. They will leap high, they will jump into water. They can do those things on a normal day even if I wasn't taking the photograph. So I'm not asking them to come and do something they wouldn't do naturally. Whenever I think of an image, I also think about the perfect person for it. I happen to be blessed with the perfect people around me. They make it easy. They make it possible every single time.

Do you ever have disagreements with people you work with, especially when everyone has a different vision?

That only happens when you're doing client work. For my personal work, sometimes my friends will tell me how they think something should be captured, and I usually won't argue because I believe that even people who aren't necessarily creative directors or storytellers might have an interesting perspective, and there's a story in everybody. So I also get to disagree a lot. If they're like, "Can I take a shot like this? Can you just take a shot of me like this?

I think I would like it," I take it from them and then I end up liking it because I listened to them. That happened a lot when I started out, so it made it easy going forward to always want to listen to other people's perspectives when they are observing those things. When you're working for someone, they will have very particular ways they want their photographs or videos made.

What are the themes in your work?

My work has themes of faith, time, youth, melancholy, freedom, and hope. I've always imagined a utopia, a perfect society. It's the image that I saw as a child, and there's that light yearning for a place that looked like that, somewhere that doesn't look like the chaotic world we live in right now. There is this thing that I think connects youth, time, and freedom. When people are young, they yearn to be free. They want to explore, go wild, be wild, be out there, all that stuff. I think those are the foundations of the work that I do. In my mind, I'm still a young person, and I'm still thinking, what would it mean to really be free? What does freedom really mean.