‘Can I see your photos?’ Precious asked me as we sat in a crowded auditorium on the University of Calabar's campus. Having known the first-year student barely a few minutes, I was unsure whether I wanted a stranger to look through the four years’ worth of photographs that documented my life in Calabar. But it was too late, she had seen the BlackBerry in my hand, and the only thing I could do as I handed over my phone was to ask to see her own photographs. Somehow, Precious's enthusiasm for showing me her photographs quickly overtook the desire to see mine, and, still waiting for the university event to resume, we passed the time with both of our heads craned over her HTC smartphone. I perused innumerable images of Precious in various outfits standing tall and smiling, one hand on hip, in front of a compound gate. More countless images followed of her in the same compound, this time close-ups with her sister. Finally, I admired a smaller collection of older professional-looking images of her dressed up in an evening gown with friends at a high-school beauty pageant. Although the range of photographs was small, Precious was keen for me to closely observe each photographic iteration of herself.
Showing photographs as a means to acquaint oneself with another is a normal practice for young people in Calabar. When I first arrived for fieldwork in the southern Nigerian city in 2010, being shown young people's photographs was a privilege of being a guest in their houses. While formal portraits of parents and grandparents hung on parlour walls in family houses, the only images young people had of themselves were kept in albums or piled up loose in their original plastic slips. Taken at weddings by professional photographers or perhaps with friends on an outing to a photographic studio, these paper photographs often became quickly tattered and burned under Calabar's oppressive humidity. By mid-2012, a large proportion of youth in Calabar owned smartphones and had embraced a culture of taking and storing photographs on their phones. Crucially, smartphones not only let others go through personal photograph albums, as I did with Precious, but also allowed individuals to share photographs with absent others. Those who owned a BlackBerry, for instance, started to freely share their photographs to other BlackBerry users by posting images on BlackBerry Messenger service. By 2015, the influx of cheaper handsets and proliferation of social media platforms, and the battle between network providers that simultaneously increased network coverage and reduced tariffs, meant that the majority of youth were able to take, store and share photographs on their phones.
Exploring how youth in Calabar use photographs on their smartphones to enhance their social status, this article adds to the growing body of analysis that portrays mobile phones revolutionizing African life worlds (Smith Reference Smith2006; Archambault Reference Archambault2011; Reference Archambault2013; McIntosh Reference McIntosh2010; Gilbert Reference Gilbert2016). Mobiles might keep Africans connected (de Bruijn et al. Reference de Bruijn, Nyamnjoh and Brinkman2009), but smartphones also allow individuals to communicate certain ideas about themselves to others through photographs. Indeed, as young people like Precious state, showing others their photographs is a way of saying ‘This is me!’ And smartphones not only allow youth to take photographs at any time of day but handsets also become personal photo albums, portable and, as long as one has subscribed to a data tariff, transmittable. Both in terms of what can be photographed and how and when a photograph can be shown to others, smartphones have given young people new means for representing themselves and, in a society where status is entwined with the display of wealth, a new method of social becoming.
Indeed, in Calabar, as elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, youth are experiencing a ‘crisis of becoming’ (see Abbink and van Kessel Reference Abbink and van Kessel2005; Honwana and De Boeck Reference Honwana, De Boeck, Honwana and De Boeck2005; Christiansen et al. Reference Christiansen, Utas and Vigh2006). While the patriarchy, gerontocracy and Christian conservatism that prevail in Calabar are experienced differently by young men and women as they attempt to ‘grow up’, those caught between childhood and an adulthood largely defined by marriage are united by their political, social and economic marginalization. For the young people in this article, all students or graduates aged between twenty and thirty, the expectation that only university education will bring the economic and social wealth to propel them into adulthood is difficult to realize. Amid the institutional inefficiencies plaguing Nigeria, young people's university careers are often prolonged by lengthy strikes and administration errors. For those who do graduate, they must wait to be mobilized for a year's national service (NYSC) before they can be awarded their university certificate. And even with the certificate that should grant access to formal employment, youth find the wait for adulthood still not over (see also Honwana Reference Honwana2012; Masquelier Reference Masquelier2013).
While Calabar is hailed as Nigeria's ‘paradise city’, young people interpret this nickname as meaning a place lacking opportunities. Compared with Port Harcourt, Lagos and even neighbouring Uyo, Calabar is seen as a place for students and civil servants, a city lacking any industry that can generate a hefty salary. Since the inauguration of Muhammadu Buhari as president of Nigeria in May 2015, life in Nigeria's paradisal city has steadily become more difficult. Buhari's anti-corruption crusade and austerity policies, combined with the global fall in oil prices and national petrol shortages, have meant that money is no longer flowing freely. As students and unemployed graduates lament, the city is now completely ‘dry’ – in addition to the existing lack of opportunities, handouts from big men are smaller or more infrequent. Also coming into office in May 2015, Cross River State's governor, Ben Ayade, has started plans to enhance the state's industry, trade and tourism. Yet while young people look forward to the prospect of job opportunities, to date Ayade's grand visions have largely overlooked more immediate concerns. The increase in armed robberies and kidnappings, combined with months of total electricity blackouts or water shortages for some areas, and the piling up of waste around the once proud ‘clean and green’ city have rendered residents’ lives highly insecure.
These exacerbated daily struggles have given youth an even more pessimistic view of the future. Without prospects, those who cannot travel to another city find themselves at home without money or entertainment. For the students and graduates in this article, home was either their parents’ or a close relative's house or, for those living alone, a small ‘self-contained’ apartment. Some had parents who were university lecturers or successful businessmen. While these young people were not all idle in the house – young men might run errands for older male friends, and young women might learn a skill such as baking – most relied on small handouts from parents, relatives or older siblings. Others had parents who were hawkers or in lower-paid jobs, meaning that these young people also had to have a trade, such as hairdressing or tailoring, to earn a living. Such information about backgrounds is rarely volunteered, and it is generally difficult to guess someone's wealth – or at least the source of their wealth – from appearances alone. However, all the young people in this article hold similar aspirations for the future: for economic independence and social recognition. Being socially mobile in such a way is not just about increasing personal finances but also about moving ahead of the crowd, to rise in others’ esteem by motivating them with new ideas and ways of being. It is the desire to be inspirational rather than to be a ‘follower’ (one who tries to advance through another's ingenuity).
In understanding how youth attempt to become socially mobile through smartphone photography, the idea of the ‘personal photographic album’ is central. As Vokes (Reference Vokes and Vokes2012) reminds us, albums are not only representations of the self but also create narratives of the self. For instance, writing about contemporary Dakar, Mustafa (Reference Mustafa2005) argues that photography, as a colonial method of representation, has been appropriated by women as a postcolonial strategy to inscribe meaning onto their bodies. Collecting ‘photographs of themselves dressed as elegantly as possible’ (ibid.: 232), and building albums that display family and fashion, Senegalese women engage in a form of self-making (sañse) linked to notions of respectability and prestige. Likewise, writing about how the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s generated new photographic practices in Uganda, Vokes (Reference Vokes2008) also demonstrates how such practices can be appropriated by groups as a means of self-making. Created by AIDS patients in the final months of their lives with the view of creating personal memorials, albums narrated an individual's personal history chronologically, allowing them to live on after death.
By arguing that these photographic representations have ‘presence’ in the lives of the living, Vokes (Reference Vokes2008) powerfully highlights that photographs are not just for the represented but are also for others. As Edwards (Reference Edwards2005) argues, photographs are social objects that have ‘relational qualities’; as material things to be experienced, photographs generate emotions in and relationships between people. Furthermore, photographs can be experienced differently, being ‘made meaningful through different forms of apprehension’ (ibid.: 27). For instance, explaining the way in which photographic displays in Okiek houses in Kenya are made up of photographs borrowed from friends and family, Kratz (Reference Kratz and Vokes2012) questions the assumption that the identities articulated in photographs are always created by those represented (see, for example, Behrend Reference Behrend2000; Mustafa Reference Mustafa2005; Vokes Reference Vokes2008). In the way in which new social settings imbue photographs with new meaning, Kratz (Reference Kratz and Vokes2012) argues that photographs also have social lives (cf. Appadurai Reference Appadurai1986; Kopytoff Reference Kopytoff and Appadurai1986; Pinney Reference Pinney1997).
The way in which photographs’ values (and social lives) can rise and fall is central to how the young people in this article engage with images on their smartphones, and it speaks to Spyer and Steedly's (Reference Spyer, Steedly, Spyer and Steedly2013) argument that photographs can be both mobile objects and generators of affect. Focusing on these two ‘moving’ characteristics of photographs, Spyer and Steedly's analysis helps us think through how images are not just captured once but, subject to subsequent physical and conceptual re-framings, constantly (re-)find their place in their world. As the following discussion illustrates, smartphone photography becomes a specific photographic movement in which identities (cf. Schneider Reference Schneider2010) and meaning are constantly being made, a social space in which photographs ‘make’ youth as youth ‘make’ photographs. Detailing how students and graduates store, share, duplicate, edit and delete photographs on their smartphones, I add another meaning to Spyer and Steedly's (Reference Spyer, Steedly, Spyer and Steedly2013) ‘moving’ photographs: the ability for images to move youth's social identities.
Building on these analyses of photographs, I argue that youth's personal photographic albums do not just create a narrative about the self, but also actively constitute the self. Taking, sharing and storing photographs on smartphones is a social practice (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1990), an active process of self-fashioning that demands that young people constantly engage with themselves and with others. By doing so, this group consciously forms new subjectivities, socially mobile actors generating new questions regarding power, desire and morality (cf. Werbner Reference Werbner2002). If ‘the practices involved in creating personal photographic albums’ affect ‘emergent notions of individualism’ (Vokes Reference Vokes and Vokes2012: 15), I emphasize the role the smartphone has to play in moulding youthful subjectivities. With its immediate and intimate forms of communication, the smartphone highlights how young people's photographic albums entwine with processes of circulation, exchange and consumption (cf. Myers Reference Myers and Miller2005; Kratz Reference Kratz and Vokes2012). The latter is particularly important in the quest to move analyses of African photography beyond a focus on colonial power relations (see Edwards Reference Edwards2005; Poole Reference Poole2005; Vokes Reference Vokes and Vokes2012). As this article explores, the photographic practices that youth in Calabar embrace are as much about being consumers of a global ‘selfie’ culture as about drawing continuities with local photographic practices.
The ethnographic data presented are drawn from eighteen months of fieldwork undertaken between June 2010 and May 2016. Researching young women's livelihoods and aspirations for the future, I did not primarily intend to carry out research on mobile phones or photography. However, as I spent time with my female informants in Pentecostal churches and sewing shops, at beauty pageants and in their houses, and socialized more generally with young men and women I came to know, mobile phones (and, from 2012, BlackBerry and smartphones) appeared as an integral part of young people's daily life and interactions with each other. Having a large amount of ethnographic data on the topic – field notes and innumerable casual conversations that focused on mobile communication – I carried out in-depth interviews specifically about smartphone photography with fifteen young men and women (aged between twenty and thirty) in April and May 2016. Although my informants do not all socialize together, Calabar is small and young people often know of each other through university, school, church or activities such as modelling or pageantry. Interestingly, mobile (particularly smartphone) communication has consolidated my informants in a social network of youthful aspiration.
The personal image: archiving the self
Smartphones not only allow youth to store hundreds of pictures but also allow them to collate images from a variety of sources: the phone's camera and screen-shot functions, social media platforms and the internet. While Edwards (Reference Edwards2005) emphasizes how the ‘relational’ photograph creates and expresses histories, a notable proportion of photographs stored on young people's phones are not so much about the past as about conjuring and giving voice to the possible future self. For instance, it is unsurprising that young men and women store photographs of their closest friends and loved ones on their phones. These photographs are often not taken with the friend but lifted without consent from social media platforms. Only the most beautiful photographs are saved in anticipation of birthdays, when the photograph will be posted on social media to celebrate the individual – either alone or together with a photograph of a cake or the well-wisher. Akin to newspapers using full-page images to acknowledge patrons, this very public celebration creates a narrative of the relationship between celebrator and celebrant and allows those in often precarious circumstances to maintain social relationships that may bring future opportunities (Gilbert Reference Gilbert2016: 13–14).
Just as storing photographs of loved ones is a personal investment, saving photographs of celebrities and famous personalities is also about optimizing the future self. Youth frequently save photographs of inspirational individuals who have overcome great struggles in their lives. While Barack Obama's photograph tells those who feel powerless that their marginalization is not a permanent condition, photographs of Nick Vujicic, an Australian motivational speaker born without limbs, remind those overwhelmed by hardship that God will bless them through seemingly impossible scenarios. Youth also save images of celebrities: young women in particular admire singers such as Beyoncé, Rihanna or Tiwa Savage for their images and voices, and young men store photographs of their favourite football players. As one avid Real Madrid supporter who had photographs of all the current and ex-players stored on his phone said about his team: ‘They are like my people.’ Far from being a relationship of mutual reciprocity, this young man's affinity with international footballers hinged on the belief that holding images of champions helped him to become a champion. Similarly, one female student who had a number of well-known figures on her phone, including Cross River's young and ambitious state governor, explained: ‘They are my role models. [I want] to put [their qualities] inside of me to become great. Because there's no how you can just wake up and be a great person.’
It is not just photographs of people that youth use to archive aspirations. Photographs taken in boutiques or in the market of shoes, clothes, bags and phones denote an individual's wish list of items that are currently only attainable as digital images. Even more likely to remain as possessions in photographic form are the designer watches, expensive cars, games consoles, and desirable bathrooms and kitchens that can be found on internet sites and social media. While the latest hairstyles, makeup, nail art and fashion shown in some photographs from the internet can be copied cheaply by those without financial stability, most of the images youth save often appear as inconceivable dreams. In the way in which Nigerians, placing power in the supernatural, believe things can be willed into existence, photographs of inspirational people and objects help young men and women focus beyond their quotidian difficulties. If photographs are extensions of the person (Edwards Reference Edwards2005; Vokes Reference Vokes2008), we might also consider how, in the way youth aim to abstract qualities from saved images, people can also be extensions of photographs. Keeping photographs in close proximity and viewing them regularly is not just about maintaining hope for better things but, in the creation of new subjectivities, about actively changing how individuals view themselves and their life possibilities.
Although smartphones document youth's aspirations through photographs of other people and objects, young people's most treasured and prolific photographs are generally of themselves. The onus is to look beautiful, to appear visually immaculate. Just as Buckley (Reference Buckley, Edwards, Gosden and Phillips2006) argues that elegant surroundings in Gambian photographic studios alter the sitter's embodied experience, making them feel composed, some occasions and places unexpectedly force those wanting to forget their unsettling circumstances to take photographs. In Calabar, fast-food restaurants, airports, hotels and manicured urban surroundings are all considered beautiful locations that will instantly enhance the individual in the photograph. On a Sunday afternoon, for instance, it is impossible to visit Calabar's Marina Resort and miss the small groups of young people photographing each other or holding selfie sticks, posing on the grassy area overlooking Calabar River. Perhaps only able to pay the 100-naira entrance fee, these young people are probably not going to watch a movie at the Film House or buy expensive drinks in the open-air riverside bars. Rather, these fashionably dressed students and graduates want to be seen hanging out in a scenic environment. Such aesthetically pleasing environments give individuals waiting to ‘grow up’ a double endorphin rush: taking photographs is a fun social event that takes them outside the house, and, by doing so, those usually lacking social clout momentarily gain prestige, achieving street credibility as they flaunt a certain model of smartphone.
Smartphones may allow the dispirited to take photographs in beautiful settings, but technology also allows individuals to enhance their photographs. Good lighting is incredibly important – so much so that youth admit that they feel the need to take photographs of themselves when they go to a well-lit place. Yet even if the natural light fails, young people, both male and female, use photo-editing applications. As one young man explained, he always saved his photographs using Instagram in order to use a digital filter that would make his naturally dark skin appear ‘brighter’. Although he joked that one Instagram filter called Reyes was even more effective than Nivea at smoothing and brightening his skin, his comments highlighted how smartphone photography has become the easiest and perhaps the most cost-effective way of attaining a fair complexion and hence admiration from peers. It is not only skin colour that can be changed in order to conform to a certain aesthetic that connotes wealth, fame and cosmopolitanism. As Catherine, a self-confessed ‘photo freak’ who admitted taking selfies practically any time of day in celebration of herself, explained: ‘[With] Camera360, you [air]brush, you take out the spots, you make it brighter – that's what you want.’ With the Camera360 app – infamous among Calabar's aspirational youth – round or square faces can be elongated and noses can be made ‘very pointed’. Even Catherine's two tribal scars on either side of her face could be removed – although, as she saw the marks as part of her, this was an unwanted consequence of smoothing out skin with the airbrush tool. While some say that smartphones can change one's appearance so much that they can ‘edit the soul’, most young people argue that editing is only about enhancing one's features.
Beautiful aesthetics are not only dictated by the subject looking good. Beauty is also expressed in new ideas, and having a good ‘concept’ is deemed central to good photography. As with fashion photoshoots or advertising campaigns, having a ‘concept’ is all about portraying a vivid story that can be extrapolated out of one photographic frame. Perhaps the most common ‘concept’ youth explore in the photographs they take of themselves can be classed as ‘just going out’. This, as the name suggests, is a photograph depicting an individual stepping out of the house for the day. The natural daylight eradicates gloom; the subject is shown as successful as they step out from a known confined space into a vast realm of unharnessed opportunities; and, more pragmatically, amidst electricity shortages, the outside air provides ample photographic lighting for the subject. While the photograph focuses on the individual, its background may depict part of a shiny front door or the inside of a sturdy compound gate, alluding to a secure house and finances. It is not only the location outside the house that denotes success: postures suggest dynamism, and clothes always appear new or freshly ironed. While young men might hold a business folder, young women model a handbag and always wear makeup. Certainly, no one sports the hairnets, ‘slippers’ (flip-flops) or shorts that are worn privately in the house. Concealing what is left inside the house and what awaits beyond the compound gates, the ‘just going out’ concept is powerful because it only hints at what will happen next, leaving the rest to the imagination.
Knowing how to pose is essential for conveying a concept well. Whether for a full-figure shot or a close-up portrait, a pose is necessary in order to show off one's best features. Some smile, showing that they are thankful and happy; one young man stands tall with his legs slightly apart and looks in control of both his surroundings and life; another young man, facing the camera, always wears a hat and looks down in order to obscure his face and to mimic celebrity mystique (see Figure 1); one young woman always stands with one leg bent, simultaneously looking carefree and enhancing her figure; another young woman stands straight with one hand on her hip, her head pointing down to direct the viewer to admire her outfit. Just as, in Ghana's popular music scene, ‘celebrities make themselves famous by announcing their own success’ (Weaver Shipley Reference Weaver Shipley2013: 82), a pose actively constructs the self that those lacking social recognition want themselves and others to acclaim. Young people might emulate the attitude of Nigerian music stars or take advice on comportment from those with expertise in modelling and pageantry, but poses are not necessarily classed as generic. As extensions of the person – and even making the person recognizable to others – they are classed as unique to the individual.
Replicating past photographs of himself, a young man poses by looking down, purposefully hiding his face from the camera. A signature pose helps construct the individual, distinguishing them from others.
Developing over time, poses take practice – or photographic trial and error, taking an overabundance of photographs and selecting only the best – and definitely need the advice of others. As one young woman stated, she would always ask the girl who lived in the next compound to take photographs of her, because, as her age-mate, she was the nearest person to give good advice on how to pose in her full-length portraits. Similarly, explaining that usually just her father was in the house when she wanted to take a photograph of her outfit, another young woman described the difficulties of trying to advise an older person on the technicalities of photographic composition. Older people's unfocused photographs – optically and conceptually blurry – only serve to demonstrate the way in which smartphone photography has become a creative cultural and social space youth have claimed for themselves (cf. Weiss Reference Weiss2009; Masquelier Reference Masquelier2013; Rovine Reference Rovine, Hansen and Madison2013). As young men and women archive their social realities and imaginaries, taking photographs of their experiences and compiling images of the yet-to-be-experienced, they engage in a dynamic process of articulating the self. Hence, personal albums on smartphones, portable and intimate, allow those stuck in social limbo to constantly reassess their current self, future aspirations and means for attaining these desires.
The promotional image: packaging and marketing
While smartphones enable Calabar's youth to reflect on their own identities through the compilation of digital albums, accomplished personal archives are not intended only for the individual. For young people, the raison d’être of a beautiful photograph is to be shared with others: to be viewed, appreciated, commented on, saved and circulated by as many individuals as possible – it is assumed that those who never share photographs are not proud of their photographic image. The ability to access and share images with others easily is an added advantage of taking photographs on smartphones, rather than purchasing hard copies taken in photographic studios or by the professional photographers who circulate at weddings and in fast-food restaurants. As the photo-savvy carry a USB cable to easily transfer professionals’ digital thumbnails to their smartphones – hopefully without paying the 200-naira fee – there is a general understanding that material photographs are not as ‘relevant’ to young people because they cannot be shown to ‘the world’. Indeed, a photograph can reach its full potential to inspire only when it is inserted into spheres of sociality.
Just as young people follow a certain etiquette for taking photographs, they are also fully aware of the unwritten rules of sharing photographs on social media. Often youth go through their photographs of past outings and post them on social media while alone in the house. While some stress that this makes them remember more convivial times as they anticipate money and opportunities, others note that the internet is generally faster at night or in the early morning, allowing them to connect to social media. Mostly, young people understand not posting photographs of outings immediately as a matter of social decorum. Posting a photograph of a social outing from another location later that day – or sometimes even days or weeks later – avoids the embarrassment of being seen simultaneously on social media and in the flesh by others at the same location. Particularly for young women, the image of urban respectability in Calabar's Christian conservatism is a fine balance between alluding to having superior connections and access to a burgeoning bank balance, and not being seen in too many places. Yet such an etiquette for posting after an outing allows those who usually feel held back in life to appear always ahead of the game, leaving behind those who have only just arrived at the location in real life.
Like timing, the content of the photographs posted on social media is also thoughtfully considered. As stated by Nora, who spent most of her time at home in Calabar having recently finished her undergraduate degree, different social media platforms required different ‘types’ or ‘grades’ of photos to be posted (cf. Miller Reference Miller2016). Nora continued to explain: ‘There are some photos that are Instagram-worthy. There are photos that are BBM-worthy. They are not the same thing! The photos that are Instagram-worthy need to be up there. They need to be really nice.’ Compared with sharing images with contacts on her BlackBerry Messenger service (BBM), the photographs Nora posted to Instagram had to show her in the best light possible. On BBM, shared only with close contacts, most admit that it is fine to post ‘real-time’ photographs of one's life. From a selfie of oneself waking up, bleary-eyed, to say ‘Good morning’, to a snapshot in a salon teasing others about the new hairstyle they are ‘making’, ‘display pictures’ on BBM are meant to generate conversation and to solicit opinions from others. However, only the photographs that show individuals in exclusive locations such as in expensive hotels or on aeroplanes, or with coveted items such as flashy cars or stylish handbags, or girls’ selfies of flawless makeup could possibly be put up for Instagram's global public to view.
If a photograph meets none of these criteria, it runs the risk of not receiving any ‘likes’. This is a hurtful experience – particularly if one has hundreds of followers – because the lack of appreciation is understood as a slight not so much to the photographer's skill as to the subject of the photograph: the individual. As another female graduate explained, not receiving any ‘likes’ on Instagram made her feel that her photograph was not ‘fine’; she insinuated that she felt that she was not ‘fine’ in that particular instance. Conversely, young men and women all cherish receiving many ‘likes’ and comments for their photographs. Giving an example of when she went to a wedding looking like the American recording artist Janelle Monáe, Sally, a university finalist, explained that she felt like a celebrity. That day her androgynous tailored suit contrasted with the figure-skimming dresses Nigerian girls usually wear to such events, catching people's attention so much that they wanted to be photographed with her. Not only did she become an accessory to enhance friends’ and strangers’ photographs that they posted of themselves, but also her own photograph that she posted on social media generated many comments about her being a ‘classy girl’ (see Figure 2). Certainly, for a photograph to be ‘up there’, to use Nora's phrase, it must be not just aesthetically pleasing but also inspirational, by presenting others with new ideas and possibilities for experiencing the world differently.
In an outfit inspired by Janelle Monáe, Sally poses at a wedding. The original photograph was circulated on social media and at one point edited in a photo-mixing application to create a photographic diptych. Sally lost the original image from her phone and now remembers her outfit through this image that someone else edited and shared on social media.
Most people can understand how receiving ‘likes’ and compliments for one's photograph is a powerful means of generating feelings of self-worth. Similarly, the way in which ‘real-time’ photographs on BBM generate conversation also propels the individual centre stage of sociality as they become recognized by others. While sharing photos helps young people who spend the majority of their time waiting to overcome boredom and feelings of loneliness (cf. Masquelier Reference Masquelier2013; Gilbert Reference Gilbert2016), these photographic practices are also just as much a project of self-enlargement. Being the most celebrated aesthete or compère on social media is an ambition of politically and economically disenfranchised youth in Calabar, although celebrity itself is not the ultimate reason for making sure that the photographs one posts on social media are as ‘inspirational’ as possible. Well aware of what they and others are doing on social media, young people admit that posting photographs of themselves is a matter of ‘packaging’ and ‘marketing’. Following Nigerians’ penchant for a market metaphor, there is the understanding that, no matter what is on the inside, if you know who you are selling to, you can style the outward appearance to meet any demand. With regard to photographs, social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook therefore become sites not for sharing but for promoting the self.
In a city lacking job opportunities for most university graduates, youth openly state that ‘looking good is good business’. In the most literal sense, young women are said to be especially guilty of knowing how to market their bodies to richer men on their contact lists. It is not unheard of for a provocative photograph posted in a time of dire poverty or boredom to solicit an instant phone call from a big man with an invitation to join him later that day in another Nigerian city. Yet, more generally, young people believe that looking the part gets them the part: looking successful puts them in a position to attract new job opportunities, and looking well connected inserts them into the circles of the already socially mobile. Crucially, the social promotion one can achieve through successful ‘packaging’ is denoted not only by the prizes one attracts but also by demands imposed by others. As with others whose photographs allude to imaginary riches, Ewase, a university graduate, stated how others on social media frequently asked her to lend them money. Explaining the trompe l'oeil, she described how she could easily buy an okrika (second-hand) dress in the market for 50 naira, add an accessory such as a belt to give the outfit a unique twist, and post a photo of it with a caption telling others that she had bought the dress for 5,000 naira. If she posed with confidence, others would calculate that she was wealthy. In reality, her salary barely covered her transport costs to and from work, meaning that she was as dependent as others for handouts.
Interestingly, while being mistaken for being wealthy was a compliment, it also came with unexpected feelings of awkwardness. Having had a childhood friend from Owerri reconnect with her on social media, Ewase explained how the long-lost friend had deduced from her stylish photographs that she had ‘made it’. The friend asked for 25,000 naira to start up a business, but Ewase had to confess to her friend that she did not have any money. Ewase continued: ‘[Then] I posted a picture of myself and she was like, “Nice!” She now goes back to her BBM and [publicly] posts something like “When you need people they are not there for you.”’ Convinced that the remark was targeted at her, Ewase was incredibly hurt at this apparent slur. Such a story highlights how alluding to wealth in photographs not only garners admiration from others but also alludes to possible patronage, and all the obligations, expectations and moral scruples that accompany this social relationship. Taking us beyond the argument that subjects’ identities are often constructed by others (Kratz Reference Kratz and Vokes2012), photographs clearly inform others’ conceptions of the possibilities contained within their relationship to the subject and hence can become powerful vehicles for social action.
The precarious image: avoiding social death
Just as Ewase explained how a confident pose can breathe life into a once discarded garment (cf. Hansen Reference Hansen2000), young people were aware of the many tricks others play to instigate a social renaissance through style. While some might tell others that their inexpensive market purchases came from Calabar's exclusive boutiques, or even from abroad, others will go further to display an image of themselves in luxury clothes. Turning boutiques into dressing-up boxes, young people – male and female – take photographs in outfits with no intention or means of buying them. While these images can be rolled out on social media over the coming days and weeks to show off new outfits, an image of the ‘happy shopper’ surrounded by potential purchases in a boutique tells the world that they have money to burn. Of course, a coveted item already purchased by someone else also adds the same value (see Figure 3). As Dorothy, a female university student questioned earnestly, if you're at a wedding and someone is about to take your photograph and you see someone else with a purse that matches your outfit exactly, why wouldn't you ask to borrow it for the photo? While looking as put together as possible seemed the obvious thing to do, Dorothy laughed at how some will then post the photo on social media and engage in conversations with others about how much the bag cost them.
A young woman poses comfortably next to somebody else's car. Young people have no qualms about momentarily using other people's possessions to enhance their photographs, creating a longer-lasting image of themselves as the photograph is circulated on social media.
Knowing that some hyperbolize their lifestyles, projecting the image of amplified comfort and wealth, young people say that photographs on social media do not reflect reality. Projecting the most aesthetically pleasing angles of one's life on social media is certainly not only a desire of urban Nigerian youth. In Miller's study of the way in which social media is used in an English village, for instance, ‘only the most visually arresting images will qualify as suitable for posting on Instagram’ (Reference Miller2016: 74). However, in Calabar, the gulf between youth's virtual – particularly Instagram – personae and lived experiences is vast. Many will point out that photographs on social media depict everyone owning beautiful houses with mouth-watering interiors – complete with large, flat-screen televisions and air-conditioning units. Andy, who still lived with his parents and was awaiting employment a number of years after graduating, said of the unbelievable images his peers posted: ‘There are some things you see and you'll think, “Wow! Are these people in Nigeria?!”’ Just as impoverished students and jobless graduates know the value of not posting photos of their daily drudgery, they are also not oblivious to the potential difficult realities behind others’ portrayals of lavish lifestyles and expensive commodities.
Revealing the disconnect between youth's photographs and the city in which they live, Andy continued: ‘We see people everywhere [on social media] with fine fine houses. Please, these other houses that we are seeing [in the street], who lives there? … Everybody that I know [on social media] who lives in Lagos lives in Lekki. Please, who lives in Ajegunle?’ While Lagosian youth appeared to live only in the most expensive areas, as neighbours of big men and celebrities, Calabar youth also posted pictures of houses only in the most exclusive parts of the city: Federal Housing, State Housing, Ekorinim, Asari Esoh – the wide (often tree-lined) roads containing large houses in gated compounds make the perfect backdrop to photographs depicting sumptuous lifestyles. ‘Nobody stays at Ediba. Nobody stays at Calabar South,’ Andy added about the photographs circulating on social media. Yet, in reality, these more insecure areas, with their one-bedroom and small ‘self-contained’ apartments on shared compounds, accommodate Calabar's university students and young people living away from home.
Ironically, even the way in which young people post photographs of their outings some time after they have happened – whether in a period of boredom or because they want to escape the social faux pas of their virtual and real selves colliding – has been consumed by the notion of social media projecting phoney lifestyles. As Andy stated: ‘What you see – [the images saying] “I'm out” [or] “I'm going to work” – most times it's a lie, they are always at home.’ Describing his photographs stored on his phone as memories, Andy admitted to posting pictures of more exciting days out, such as swimming at Tinapa Waterpark, months after they had happened in a bid to bring some cheer to his days spent in his family house. However, he was quick to point out that some people (particularly girls) deliberately store photographs of themselves, posting them slowly over time in order to maintain the image of having a busy lifestyle. An individual might have travelled to another city for only a weekend, but a collection of photographs of them in different outfits at various luxurious locations – expensive houses and exclusive hotels – will belie the reality of sleeping through the boredom of being at home without electricity or money in Calabar.
As with the milikilistes who disguise their past struggles living in European cities behind the flamboyance and exuberance of la Sape (Gondola Reference Gondola1999), or with young Ivorians who inflate their social standing by wearing counterfeit designer clothes (Newell Reference Newell2012), the tension between the celebrated surface image and the personal experience of what lies beneath is always present in the images youth in Calabar share of themselves. And, certainly, with this tension comes the risk of being exposed as living a ‘fake life’, an accusation that instantly devalues the individual. Being fake is not just about posing with an expensive car or suggesting that one's market-bought clothes are designer – after all, following the social necessity of looking good, there is the assumption that everyone tries to enhance their appearance to a certain degree. A ‘fake life’ is about adhering to the lies to such an extent that one comes to believe them, forgetting one's own and others’ struggles. It is, as with other instances of social tension in West Africa, about forgetting one's ‘roots’ (Geschiere Reference Geschiere1997; Newell Reference Newell2012). A ‘fake life’ is classed as ‘deceitful’ because ultimately – and again returning to the market metaphor – an individual is ‘selling’ a story that is not true. Photographs of ‘fake lives’ are regarded as underhand because they are not merely static narratives about individuals; rather, as objects to be consumed, they serve as devices that reorder social relations and reignite possibilities for action.
Although young people are able to call out their neighbours and friends, they admitted that it was difficult to really know when others’ photographs contradicted lived experiences. In a society that has become characterized by disorder (Obadare and Adebanwi Reference Obadare, Adebanwi, Obadare and Adebanwi2010) and deception (Apter Reference Apter, Comaroff and Comaroff1999; Smith Reference Smith2007), in which signs and their referents have become detached from each another (Apter Reference Apter2005; cf. Mbembe Reference Mbembe2002), youth in Calabar are unable to discern an intelligible truth about what lies behind the images their peers present to them. Certainly, young people are now rather equivocal about the once authoritative claim that ‘seeing is believing’. As demonstrated by the unattainable demands placed on Ewase by her childhood friend, youth are all too aware of both the power of the photograph to convince others and the dangers of drawing too many conclusions from a visual source. However, despite the uncertainty of photographic realism (cf. Killingray and Roberts Reference Killingray and Roberts1989), individuals still find value in suspiciously beautiful photographs. Sidestepping the question of how a photographic sign relates to its youthful referent, young people try to focus on the ways in which images relate to their own being and aspirations. Explaining how she enjoyed looking through photographs of her immaculately dressed peers, one female student stated: ‘I just see a picture and I think, “Oh nice!” I don't go further to judge you or to think you have money … I just leave it as it is.’ Placing value in aesthetically pleasing photographs, young people concentrate on the surface image that will simultaneously bring some beauty to their daily hardship and inspire them to keep aiming higher in life.
However, even creating a relationship between photograph and self involves risk. While Nora had explained how the photos she posted to her own Instagram account had to be ‘up there’, she later confessed that she did not like going on the social media app because she felt ‘pressured’. As she went on to explain:
If I go on Instagram, people are putting pictures of cars and food and a lot of things. And you know, you're just there eating jollof rice, and you see someone eating jollof rice, plantain, chicken, turkey – and you know, you feel you've not really achieved a lot in your life!
Just as Nora's food metaphor compared her own modest lifestyle with the expensive and bountiful lifestyles depicted in photographs, young men and women unable to afford comfortable, let alone luxurious, lifestyles explained how they could feel ‘intimidated’ by others’ photographs. Outlandish experiences, possessions and appearances could all lead them to doubt their own value and means for success. Hence, returning to how smartphone photography is a means of social becoming, if internalizing others’ photographic images can breathe life into youth's possibilities, the process can also bring about social death if one stops concentrating on the inspiration and focuses too much on one's reality.
Besides the ambiguous relationship between photographic sign and referent, or the uncertainty of whether an image inspires or extinguishes dreams, youth's smartphone photographs are also precarious due to their immateriality. Just as digital photographs can be easily stored, they can just as easily be lost. Losing handsets to armed robbers is not uncommon, and young people speak with sadness that the offenders do not even spare the memory card. Others speak of the annoyance of wiping their memory card when having to ‘flash’ handsets, a procedure that is undertaken when a handset no longer turns on because it has been continually charged by an erratic electricity supply. Resulting in anger or despair, losing photographs makes youth ‘feel like a part of [them] is gone’. While some cannily admitted that they now uploaded their photographs to Facebook – not to share them with others but as a means of backing up digital images – most youth acknowledge the usefulness of sharing photographs with friends.
By sending contacts a message to ask whether they have saved any of their photographs, young people are often able to retrieve lost images. Close friends and family will likely save photographs, but it is always surprising to find out which other contacts have saved not just one but many photographs. As one student who had asked contacts for photographs after losing her phone to robbers revelled: ‘One of my friends sent like twenty of my pictures!’ Reiterating photographs’ relational quality (Edwards Reference Edwards2005), we might infer from the duplication and circulation of images that photographs on smartphones are integral to reaffirming young people's social status. Young people's social identity is enlarged the more others save their photographs.
Yet, as photographs make social worlds (Spyer and Steedly Reference Spyer, Steedly, Spyer and Steedly2013), such practices also beg the question of what social identities are being immortalized in and by the digital realm. Perhaps unsurprisingly, only the most ‘beautiful’ photographs are shared, saved by others and hence retrievable by their subject. Photographs from childhood or images of former homes in other cities are never shared because these digital copies of often lost originals are not deemed appropriate for ‘promoting’ the self. By archiving as private photographs the times and places to which they cannot physically return, individuals remove these images from social memory and run the risk of losing this part of them forever. Hence, while young people are quick to say that others hide their real identities behind aesthetically pleasing photographs, the very public, collaborative photographic practices that smartphones enable are just as responsible for the creation and preservation of identities that colour youth's realities.
Conclusion
Merging past and future, experience and aspiration, reality and imagination, self and other in a seamless stream of images, the photograph albums created by young people in Calabar on their mobile phones are a narrative of the self (cf. Vokes Reference Vokes2008). A key argument throughout my discussion has been how photographs do not merely represent the self but help to actively construct it, and here I emphasize the centrality of the smartphone in this narrative of social becoming. Smartphones not only connect individuals but also their capacity to take, store and transmit photographs has provided a social space for young people to collate, rearrange and reflect upon their realities and desires. Yet smartphones also allow young people to manipulate the images they want to share with others. By editing aesthetics, playing with time and overcoming geography, youth use photographs to construct social identities that often belie their quotidian existence. To add, therefore, to Spyer and Steedly's (Reference Spyer, Steedly, Spyer and Steedly2013) concept of the ‘moving’ qualities of photographs, images on smartphones are not only circulated and create emotional reactions, but they can also ‘move’ youth's social identities.
Yet, as I have thought through how youth in Calabar use photographs to ‘make’ themselves, I have also shown that youth's photographic practices rest on the antagonisms of self and other, private and public – tensions that arise due to the fact that photographs are relational objects. In private, young people look through photographs of themselves that show them in the best possible light – either literally or with the help of editing software – in order to take the focus off their daily struggles. Youth can also use photographs of other people and things to inspire them into new ways of seeing the world and, hopefully, new ways of being. Threats to these new ideas of self can arise when youth stop focusing on the aspiration and remember the gulf between what is and what could be. Yet, perhaps ironically, the biggest risk to the social identities produced through photographic practices occurs when one's photographs are inserted into the public domain. Just as others confirm social identities as inspirational through ‘likes’, they can also dismiss them by classing a photographic image as deceitful.
The young people mentioned throughout my discussion are shown to have an ambivalent relationship to illusionary photographic practices. As shown in Catherine's commitment to airbrushing her selfies or Dorothy's willingness to borrow others’ accessories to optimize her outfit, youth unproblematically engage in practices that enhance their photographic image. However, although they can be critical of how other people present themselves, none of my informants would admit that their own photographs are ‘fake’ or out to deceive others. Explaining that those who cast doubt on their image are merely ‘haters’, young people minimize the risk of social failure by focusing only on those who compliment their photo. Hence, an important point throughout this article has been how smartphone photography is very much a social practice – not only are identities forged through collaboration between self and others, but this activity is thoroughly embedded in the social world in which it is crafted. As young people create and engage with photographs in a society marked by duplicity, corruption and illusion, they show that the means photographs provide for social becoming do not lie outside quotidian experiences. Embedded in an uncertain social world, in which people both take part in and critique illusionary practices, mobile phone photography is another method of instant and opaque self-making in urban Nigeria.
