A Photographic Life - 223: Plus Sodiq Adelakun

In episode 221 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the ethics of photographing children, making a living from photography and welcoming the non-photographer photographers to photography. Plus this week, photographer Sodiq Adelakun takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ Sodiq Adelakun is a Nigerian photojournalist, based in Abuja who started out in photography in 2001 by assisting in a photo studio owned by his father in Lagos, Nigeria while finishing his degree in Psychology at University of Ibadan. In 2011 he decided to specialise in photojournalism after attending a course in photojournalism at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism which was co-facilitated by the World Press Photo Foundation. Sodiq progressed to intern at one of Nigeria’s leading newspapers, The Punch where he won several awards, including the Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Journalism in 2011, the Quill Awards for Best Photo Story of the Year in 2013 the NB Golden Pen Awards for Photojournalist of the Year in 2016 and the Nigeria Media Merit Award for News Photographer of the Year. His photo series Afraid To Go To School was awarded a winning prize under the stories category for the African region at the World Press Photo Regional Awards in the year 2022 Photo Contest. Between 2019-2022, Sodiq was a Photo Editor at Channels TV Digital, the biggest TV Station in Nigeria. This position  allowed him to sharpen his skills as an editor, as well as handle stock photographs for the TV’s website, production and for archival usage. Whilst working for Channels, he became an AFP photo correspondent based in Abuja covering events such as the presidential elections in 2019, the EndSARS protests, the mass kidnapping of children, and the bloody Shiaa protests. His work was featured in publications and online within The New York Times, Bloomberg, BBC, CNN, Amnesty International, Le Monde. He has also been commissioned by international organisations such as the European Union (EU), and the United Nations (UN). www.sodiqadelakun.com Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts. © Grant Scott 2022