A digital exhibition of The Black Frame

I created The Black Frame because I was tired of watching dark-skinned African women disappear in the editing room, in the lighting setup, in the algorithm that decided whose face was worth amplifying and whose was worth suppressing, and in the photographer who pointed a camera at a dark-skinned woman and saw a problem to document rather than a person to honour.

I know this disappearance because I have lived it, and it is the reason I became a researcher and why I built this. My doctoral research at Northwestern University examines how artificial intelligence reproduces skin-tone discrimination against dark-skinned Nigerian female performers. And what I kept finding, in all of that research, was that the most powerful counter to algorithmic erasure is not better technology. It is better human practice.

The Black Frame is my answer to that finding.

Over six days, nine women photographers in Lagos learned to see, light, and frame dark skin with care and precision. They learned what consent actually means and what dignity looks like through a lens. And then they went out into Lagos and made photographs that only they could make.

This is not a photography exhibition. Instead, it is an argument made by nine women who say that dark skin deserves to be seen properly. And because they said it behind a camera, every dark-skinned woman they will ever photograph from this day forward will be seen differently.