Mutating Origins: Adeyemi Adebayo

What happens to our sense of self when we leave home behind? In Mutating Origins, Nigerian photographer Adeyemi Adebayo unpacks this question through a mix of portraiture, still life, and oral storytelling. The project is an intimate and unflinching look at the lives of African migrants in the United States, people whose identities are constantly in flux, stretched across borders, histories, and hopes.

Adebayo’s choice to present the portraits and passport-style images in black and white feels deliberate. Stripped of colour, the collaborators appear both timeless and unplaceable, a visual metaphor for the liminal space many migrants occupy. These monochrome frames reduce distraction and strip away the certainty of identity. Instead, we’re invited to sit with the complexity of who they were before migration, and who they’re becoming now.

In contrast, the still life images, vibrant, warm, and full of colour, offer a glimpse into the past. They show possessions brought from home, carefully folded clothes, cherished objects, and fragments of another life. These artefacts carry emotional weight. They speak of joy, tradition, and identity before dislocation. Perhaps unintentionally, or perhaps with sharp intention, the coloured images evoke a different emotional register, one that suggests brightness, nostalgia and maybe even a sense of wholeness that the present struggles to deliver.

Florence's gown with kid's dashiki

Mutating Origins is not simply about movement from one place to another. It’s about what migration does to the body, the mind, and the memory. It questions the idea of the West as a promised land, instead showing the quiet, everyday negotiations that come with trying to belong in a place that doesn’t always welcome you. The project asks, what does home mean when you’re reshaping it on unfamiliar ground? What gets left behind, and what, if anything, can be carried forward?

By working closely with each participant, Adebayo prioritises ethical storytelling. His collaborators are not just subjects; they are co-authors. Through shared dialogue, they shape the way they are seen. This mutual exchange, where stories are revisited, refined, and even revised, allows for a layered and more honest documentation.

There is a tenderness running through Mutating Origins. It lives in the quiet eye contact of a portrait, in the familiar textures of a cherished item, and in the cadence of a shared story. While the project is rooted in the African diaspora in the U.S., its questions resonate far and wide.

In an age of borders and binaries, Mutating Origins reminds us that identity is never fixed. It’s constantly mutating, sometimes painfully, sometimes beautifully- carried in memory, shaped in motion, and reflected in the stories we dare to tell.

Adeyemi Adebayo is a Nigerian documentary Photographer and Writer currently based in the U.S. Find out more about his work.