For Muegbeyogho Nosakhare Courage, photography has evolved from a fascination with creating images into a way of examining history, identity and cultural memory. Since beginning his photography journey in 2017, the Benin City-based photographer has developed a practice spanning portraiture, documentary photography and constructed visual narratives.
Working within the historic and cultural landscape of the Benin Kingdom has deeply influenced that practice. Rather than treating culture simply as something to document, Courage uses photography to examine his own relationship with inherited histories and the meanings carried by cultural symbols. Projects including Shadow Forms and The Weight of the Crown explore questions of belonging, authority, absence and the ways history continues to shape contemporary identity.
Alongside his artistic work, Courage founded Ncourage Photo Creative Studio and Academy and Visual Shift Africa, extending his focus to photography education and the development of African visual storytellers. In this Spotlight Interview with CA, he discusses cultural memory, artistic responsibility, visual literacy, emerging technology and why Africans must play a greater role in shaping how their histories are represented.
CA: When did photography become more than simply creating beautiful images for you?
Courage: I was initially drawn to photography because of its ability to preserve a moment. When I started in 2017, I was fascinated by the technical side and the possibility of creating beautiful images.
As I continued to work, I began to understand that photography could do much more than document what was in front of the camera. It could preserve memory, question history and communicate things that are sometimes difficult to express with words.
Today, I see photography less as simply taking pictures and more as a visual language through which I can investigate ideas and construct narratives.
CA: How has living and working in Benin City influenced the stories you choose to tell?
Courage: Culture here is not something I encounter only in books or museums. It exists around me in our language, architecture, ceremonies, family structures, objects, stories and everyday life.
The history of the Benin Kingdom contains questions of power, displacement, colonialism, heritage, loss and continuity. Being surrounded by that history has made me interested in looking beyond the obvious symbols of culture and asking what those symbols mean to the people who inherit them.
I am not simply documenting Benin culture. I am also trying to understand my relationship with it and how that relationship continues to evolve.
CA: Shadow Forms examines the distance between belonging to a culture and fully understanding it. What inspired that idea?
Courage: Shadow Forms came from a personal question: how much of a culture do we really know simply because we belong to it?
We often assume that belonging automatically means understanding, but culture is passed down through fragments. We inherit stories, symbols, traditions and sometimes memories of things we never personally experienced.
I became interested in the idea that cultural identity can sometimes feel like looking at a shadow. You recognise the shape and know something is there, but parts remain hidden. The project became a way to investigate that uncertainty.
CA: Why did teaching other photographers become an important part of your own artistic journey?
Courage: Education became part of my journey because I realised that knowledge becomes more meaningful when it can be transferred.
When I started photography, much of what I learned came through experimentation, mistakes, observation and searching for information. I wanted to create an environment where photographers could learn in a more structured way and understand photography beyond the camera.
Teaching is not separate from my artistic practice. Working with other photographers constantly exposes me to new perspectives, questions and ways of seeing.
CA: Visual Shift Africa has reached more than 400 creatives across Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda. What has that shown you about African visual storytelling?
Courage: There is an enormous amount of creative potential across Africa. The challenge is often not a lack of talent. It is access to knowledge, equipment, professional networks, opportunities, technology and sustainable business models.
I have also realised that African photographers increasingly want to tell their own stories from their own perspectives.
I believe the future of African visual storytelling should involve more Africans becoming authors of their own narratives while building the professional structures that allow those narratives to reach wider audiences.
CA: As AI becomes more influential in creative work, how can African artists embrace it without losing their own voices?
Courage: I do not see technology as the enemy of creativity. I see it as another tool. The important question is whether we remain intentional about why we are using it.
An artist should determine the idea, meaning, emotion and direction, then decide where technology can assist that process.
For African artists, we should be asking how these technologies can help us develop our own visual languages. AI is most interesting to me when it expands what an artist can imagine without replacing the artist’s authorship.
CA: What contribution do you ultimately hope your work makes to Africa’s visual culture?
Courage: I would like my work to contribute to a culture of looking more deeply. I want to create photographs that encourage people to question what they think they already know about African history, identity and culture.
Through education, I want to help create more people capable of telling their own stories with intention and confidence.
Africa does not lack stories. We have an abundance of them. What we need are more artists willing to research them, question them and reinterpret them from within.
