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Dr Ajamu X
Darkroom/Fine Art Photographic Artist.
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TRUE STORY:

Dr Ajamu X is an iconic Fine Art Photographer, Archivist and Activist.

His work sits within many private and public collections including, Tate Britain, Autograph, The Rose Art Museum, Victoria & Albert Musuem, GOMA and the Martin Parr Foundation.

He is also a mentor and a friend.

Recently I got the chance to interview him at his London studio.

His insight, passion and wisdom captured by the moving image.

Just currently editing the footage.

Looking forward to sharing this limited series with you, staring Wednesday 7th October.

~Cj~ taken in London, United Kingdom by @ajamustudios

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8 days ago

Thumb (Triptych), 2026
Muse @ramelusherwood_ by @ajamustudios

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9 days ago

Mum, London 2026 by @ajamustudios

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9 days ago

@Amelia_Abraham and Ajamu X / @AjamuStudios join us in Bristol on 18 OCT for an artist talk at this year’s photobook festival, @BOP_Bristol 26.

They’ll be in conversation on Amelia’s new photobook, Sex, Clubs, Dissent: Visualising Queer Nightlife, published by @MACK_publishing, 2026, and featuring Ajamu’s work.

With over 200 photographs, accompanied by a series of essays, the book charts an expansive visual history of queer nightlife, exploring how image-making has fostered, and at times jeopardised, the formation of queer practices, subcultures, and forms of resistance.

Amelia and Ajamu will discuss the role of photography in pleasure activism, the importance of queer archives, and Ajamu’s visual contribution to the book.

Link in the MPF bio 👉 @MartinParrFDN for full details programme details and to book your space to join the talk.

Photo - Ajamu X, Untitled, 1997. © 2025 Ajamu X. All rights reserved, DACS. From Sex, Clubs, Dissent: Visualising Queer Nightlife by Amelia Abraham (MACK, 2026). Courtesy of the artist and MACK. taken in Bristol, United Kingdom by @ajamustudios

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20 days ago

To celebrate yesterday’s new moon, we want to share one of our latest cosmological portraits entitled “X (Nu/Apuat/Geb).” For those who get to this post early, if you swipe through there is also a little sneak peak at our artistic and photographic process. We rarely share behind the scenes, and this may or may not survive Instagram, so we hope you all enjoy it while it is available.

We had the immense pleasure of collaborating with legendary photographer @ajamustudios last year as he shot “FIERCE: Pittsburgh,” a series of portraits of Black LGBTQ luminaries in Pittsburgh. While he was in Pittsburgh, we also took the opportunity to photograph him in our own Rainbow Serpent style as well. Shot over two days in three distinctive painting motifs, Ajamu embodied the deities Nu, Apuat, and Geb - three deities from Rainbow Serpent Cosmology.

Together, these figures form a triptych of elemental forces: Nu, the primordial Black waters of infinite potential; Apuat, the opener of ways and cosmic navigator; and Geb, the god of the living Earth and tactile embodiment.

Through fluorescent body paint, sacred gesture, ultraviolet photography, and precise photographic composition, the portrait reimagines the ancient Egyptian Geb–Nut tableau as a modern-day Black queer cosmogram. Ajamu’s body becomes both surface and conduit, a living axis where myth and flesh converge. This is portraiture as ritual act.

Creating the final composited image greatly expanded our creative practice - layering temporal and spiritual registers into one visual field. The result is composited embodiment, a photographic cosmogram that signals a deepening of our engagement with myth, ritual staging, and the living body as divine text.

Photography & Painting: @marques.redd & @mikaelowunna
Model: @ajamustudios

#rainbowserpentcosmology #cosmology #divineart by @ajamustudios

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a month ago

The Dark Mother, The Serpent: Fruit of The Mother of Mothers.

Exploring folklore, embodiment, Afro-indigenous spirituality, animism and the deep dark feminine through art, sensuality, creativity and sexuality.

I made this mask to invoke and embody the parts of me that dwell in the shadows. My wholeness, the feminine, the vast…the deep Earth. They are beautiful, so powerful and transformative.

Photo by @ajamustudios
Song: @willowsmith #goddess #darkfeminine #serpent #darkmother #earthgoddess by @ajamustudios

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a month ago

@kyriacos.tx
14.08.2026 by @ajamustudios

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2 months ago

" To be sensual , I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread"

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

From the series An Exquisite Sound of Paper X, 2025

My Muses
@ramelusherwood_
@hakeemkaxeem by @ajamustudios

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2 months ago

Event / Ten.8 afterimage Symposium

We are thrilled to highlight our first panel of speakers - Dr Ajamu X, Dr Ian Sergeant and Shaqúelle Whyte - with David A Bailey moderating.

Panel 1: Reading Black Images: from Ten.8 to the present
12:15 – 1:15 PM

How do we define ‘black images’ today? And how are these images read, circulated, and understood across different historical moments? Bringing together artists, curators, and writers, this panel reflects on the shifting meanings of Black photographic representation from the period of Ten.8 to the present day. Through conversations around archives, intimacy, spectatorship, and contemporary image cultures, the discussion considers how Black visual practices continue to shape ways of seeing, remembering, and relating.

- Dr Ajamu X (Hons FRPS) is a darkroom / fine art photographic artist, archival curator and co-founder of Spit & Spider Press.
- Dr Ian Sergeant is the Senior Curator of Global Majority Collections at Birmingham Museums Trust.
- Shaqúelle Whyte is a Wolverhampton-born, London-based artist. His first solo institutional exhibition, Shattered Dreams, is currently on view at Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
- David A Bailey MBE is a London-based photographer, writer, curator, lecturer and cultural facilitator.

The Ten.8 afterimage symposium brings together artists, curators, writers and researchers to reflect on the enduring legacy of the photography journal Ten.8 (1978 -1992) and address relevant questions around photography, representation, identity and cultural production. Throughout the day, we will consider how photographic and wider visual practices have shaped ways of seeing, remembering and representing communities across generations between the 1980s and today.

Book your tickets now to attend the symposium on Saturday 5 September (11am - 3:45pm) at The New Art Gallery Walsall via the link in our bio.

Images: Ajamu X. Mx Mavis, Agony Artist 2024. Courtesy of the artist; Ian Sergeant, Shaqúelle Whyte, David A Bailey. Courtesy of the artists. by @ajamustudios

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2 months ago

This week, we encourage you to explore the magnetic work of Ajamu X (@ajamustudios), a darkroom/fine art photographic artist, independent scholar and archivist. Born to Jamaican migrant parents and raised in a northern working-class community, his work unapologetically celebrates the Black queer body, the erotic senses and the sensual material attributes of the photographic act and print.

Today, he is recognised as a pioneering photographic artist whose practice celebrates Black queer experience and gives visibility to more dissident representations of sexuality, intimacy and desire.

Read more in the interview by @maggie_kuzan 👉 click the link in our bio!

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Images: (1) Ajamu X, Self-Portrait in Wedding Dress, 1992. © Ajamu X. All rights reserved, DACS Images; (2) Ajamu X, Fabulous Gangster, 2025. 1_3 + 1 AP. Platinum Print, 16 x 20 inches. Image 14 x 18 inches. Courtesy of Ajamu X and Amanda Wilkinson, London; (3) Ajamu X, A Sensual Chorus of Gestures XV, 2024. Edition 3 + 1 AP. Platinum print on Tosa Washi Paper, 16 x 20 inches / 41 x 51 cm (AWG_AJ0043). Courtesy of Ajamu X and Amanda Wilkinson, London; (4) Ajamu X, Hephaestus, 2025. Edition 3 + 1 AP, 16 x 20 inches (AWG_AJ0057). Courtesy of Ajamu X and Amanda Wilkinson, London; (5) Ajamu X, Rikki [back of head], Glamour Posse, 1993. © Ajamu X. All rights reserved, DACS Images. by @ajamustudios

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2 months ago

Dr David Dibosa
Writer, Curator, Academic by @ajamustudios

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3 months ago

Thorne
Brockwell Park (17/July 2026)
@onemorefitness_raf by @ajamustudios

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3 months ago