In Nigeria, faith is shared, seen, and often expressed through clothing. This project explores how clothing and symbolic objects reflect religious identity and belief in Nigeria’s diverse faith communities. Through portraits, it investigates how fashion becomes both a personal expression and a communal language of faith shaping identity, creating belonging, and reinforcing shared convictions. It highlights the tension between fashion and faith, and examines how dress communicates conviction, reverence, and connection to the divine.

What flower could signal the end of one life and the beginning of another? Could he call any of this the beginning of a life? Could he call these past months living? They felt like a dissolving, like a dissolving of the self into this landscape, into this garden where he stood, into the air and the trees and the sky, so that the vital forces of his life may be absorbed by the earth itself and pain may have no substantive place in his heart anymore.

Visule did not wait to be solicited. To collaborate with sitters he approaches them. He lingers with them. His camera often not visible. People would have to wait for him to share that he was a photographer. For most of our time together that morning in Arderne Gardens, Visule carried his cameras inside his bag. I had asked to observe him photograph and join a visit he would make to the Garden.

Visule Kabunda engages the garden as a dynamic site of emotional reflection, mutual care, and decolonial practice in post-apartheid South Africa. Grounded in the gardening practices of Black communities living in South Africa, this work examines how gardening offers important insights into how communities might ethically relate to land, memory, and one another.

I creep into the city at dusk. I have not been here for many years. Years or decades? I cannot tell, but when I see her, I will know how long it has been. Every city carries a distinct feeling like every human carries a unique scent and when I return to Casablanca it feels the same; old grandeur, stale smoke and the sense that everything is changing.

The most outstanding characteristic of Yasmine Hatimi’s photography is its compelling sense of place. Her work highlights Moroccan communities in a manner that is realist and unadorned yet full of tender experiments: shades, gazes, stark architecture. Leaping beyond her previous projects on Moroccan masculinity and culture, her new portfolio of images offers a unique interiority. 

The ruins give way to renewal, to the promise of progress, to the shimmering face of a country in motion. I tell myself not to judge, only to witness. Yet questions echo within me, doubts gather in the silence. I should rejoice at this vision of growth, I should feel pride—but something falters, a dissonant note, a bitter taste I cannot ignore.

I chose this photograph because it was a quiet moment when Auntie Ntombekhaya was tucked away from the main path of the tour. It portrays care and attention through the activity being engaged in, grace in her posture, seated position and how the needle is held, while also giving context to the community within which this is unfolding.

This image was my favorite from the day’s photographs. It draws you into a private moment. A tension between three people you’re not fully let into. You don’t get the full story. You’re left with what you can gather.

The photograph was taken in Kariakoo, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on 29 October 2025 during the general election. I went there to document the atmosphere in this densely populated area amid online calls from Gen Z for a peaceful protest against the current constitution. While moving through the streets, I encountered a security guard at this moment, which resonated with me, so I quietly captured the image without disturbing him.

The photograph was taken in The Gambia, during a visit to see family and friends. I worked slowly and attentively, often returning to the same spaces, allowing moments to unfold rather than staging them. The image emerged through this process of observation, guided by my interest in impermanence and the subtle tensions between memory and the present.

This photograph was taken in the homestead of my Xhosa family in Eastern Cape. We were all celebrating the end of a ceremony, and I was sitting in the corner with another Makhoti, a new family member, brought into the husband’s family through marriage (I am one of the two in the home).

This photo was taken in Abidjan, two days before the end of a skate tour organized by SurfGhana in October 2022. The goal of the tour, lasting a little over a week, was to bring together Ghanaian and Ivorian skate communities. I was tasked with documenting the journey. Initially, I was just going to take a group photo with all the skaters, but I am fascinated by movements. By instinct, I started moving my camera, getting closer to try to capture less frozen, less sought-after moments.

At the LagosPhoto Festival, Tender Photos has curated Kindred, a constellation of 24 photographs and texts featured in the newsletter archive of Tender Photos. Showing an asynchronous cascade of images and blocks of text on both walls, viewers are invited to match an image with its corresponding caption.

Tender Visions is a new cross-disciplinary commissioning program for photographers and writers based on the African continent, produced by Tender Photos and supported by funding from the Open Society Foundations. 13 photographers have been commissioned to produce new work within their communities, guided by predefined themes, and in collaboration with 26 writers, who are to write original creative or critical responses to the photographic projects.

It has been a pleasure to feature the work of the Tender Photo Editorial Fellows during the past few months. Five writers based on the African continent have worked with the cofounders of Tender Photos, Emmanuel Iduma and Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, to initiate and facilitate correspondence with the featured photographers.