Uche Okpa-Iroha

He was on the Panel of Nominators for WorldPressPhoto's Joop Swart Masterclass selection committee in 2016. He is also a member of the International Federation of Kidney Foundation

He won the Seydou Keita Prize for this Series in 2015.

2015 — Seydou Keita Prize — Best Photography Creation (The Plantation Boy)

He is a founding member of the Blackbox Collective and Invisible Borders Trans-African Organisation and in 2013, he founded and established The Nlele Institute, where he serves as Director.

In 2013, he completed a two-year research residency and fellowship programme at the Rijksakademie in the Netherlands.

In 2011, Uche Okpa-Iroha was one of 25 artists selected for a two-year residency research fellowship programme at the Rijksakademie Van Bleeldende Kunsten. The prestigious Rijskakdemie Van Bleeldende Kunsten, which was founded by King William III in 1870 provided Uche the platform for developing his talent on an international scale and further exposed his works to the international community.

ISOLATED (Series). (2011 — Present) ISOLATED is an ongoing series that Okpa-Iroha began in 2011, It showcases the pervasive informal modes of communication in cities, modes of text, unorthodox advertising and other modes of communication and displaying messages that are on the fringes of the spectrum. Most of the time these images exist as whims and are covered with other materials,as is very common in cities such as Lagos, something he calls the city's response to its having to constantly reshape it's commercial geography, leading to the emergence of this novel, organic outlook alongside the dynamic urban language that it sprung. They are mostly in street corners, alleys, private residences, shops, church buildings, electric poles, and even on house lintels.

2010 — Prix Pictet “Growth” in 2010 (Nomination)

The title situates the work within the black and African quest for freedom and self-determination that arose in the slave plantation era and continues to impact the lives of black subjects globally. He won the Seydou Keita Prize for this Series in 2009.

2009 — Seydou Keita Prize — Best Photography Creation (Under the Bridge Life)

2009 — Jean-Paul Blachere Foundation Prize

In 2008, his first major project “The Under Bridge Life” was favorably received by critics and exposed him to international audiences. The project earned him the Seydou Keita award for the Best Photographic Creation at the 2009 edition of the African Photography Encounters in Bamako and in the same year, he received the Jean-Paul Blachere Foundation Prize for the same work.

In 2007, Okpa-Iroha was announced first runner-up of the Life in My City Art and Photography competition, organized by the Alliance Franciase and Rokana Industries in Enugu, Nigeria.

Uche Okpa-Iroha discovered his interest in photography in 2005, when he attended an exhibition hosted by the Nigerian collective Depth of Field (DOF) in London. He became a full-time professional photographer in 2006, having apprenticed under his cousin, the Prince Claus Laureate, Uche James Iroha. The following year, the Black Box Photography Collective was formed by Uche Okpa-Iroha and some friends as a community of photo-artistic enthusiasts. The group organized major exhibitions in Lagos, Nigeria and Havana, Cuba.

Uche Okpa-Iroha holds a Bachelor of Technology degree in Food Engineering from the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria which he completed in 1997.

Uche Okpa-Iroha (born in Enugu in 1972) is a Nigerian multidisciplinary artist who mainly adopts photography as his preferred medium of artistic expression.

Uche Okpa-Iroha was born on January 2, 1972, to Mr. Nwokocha Okpa-Iroha and Mrs. Chidi Okpa-Iroha. He has four other siblings. The family hails from Abia State in the South Eastern Niger Delta area of Nigeria. Okpa-Iroha is married to Ayo Joy Okpa-Iroha and they have two children.

Completed during the final year of his residency at the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the 'Plantation Boy' series see Okpa-Iroha intervening in Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film, The Godfather by isolating and appropriating forty original film stills from the seminal movie.