TALL, urbane, soft spoken and no airs and graces about him. No frills, he is simply “Tam” to you, or “Uncle Tam” to someone else, depending on how your relationship with him started. Tam Fiofori is an achiever, and would have been an achiever in any area of endeavour he chooses.
As a student at the highly esteemed King’s College (KC), Lagos, he excelled in athletics representing the school in triple jump and became Nigeria’s school boy champion with a national record attached. With a soft voice and decorous mannerism, he could have become a medical practitioner. He was actually admitted into King’s College London where he studied the three Ps – physiology, psychology and psychiatry, preparatory to going on to study medicine. But Tam jettisoned a career in the medical field for the creative arts, writing and music.
Bold and audacious, he convinced the African-American musician Sun Ra he was the manager he badly needed. “More than anyone else Tam Fiofori made Sun Ra known internationally,” he is acknowledged. For six years he not only succeeded in improving Sun Ra’s image but got him a wider global audience. He took him on a tour of Europe where we played 30 concerts in eight countries and ended up at the foot of the majestic pyramids of the pharaohs in Egypt, engendering “a founding connection between Ra and the movement that would be known as Afrofuturism”.
Tam had earlier met Fela then in music school in England in the sixties, they bonded and became friends. After his sojourn abroad he returned to Nigeria and renewed his friendship with Fela. His quest to know what was happening locally took him to Demas Nwoko’s New Culture Studio in Ibadan. He sought out and made friends with professional colleagues.
Tam Fiofori is a renowned Nigerian documentary photographer, filmmaker, writer, critic and media consultant. Through his films, he had highlighted such Nigerian artists as Biodun Olaku, J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere and Olu Amoda. His works have been exhibited or screened in Africa, Europe and the US, including Odum and Water Masquerades (1974), screened at FESTAC ’77, Tampere Film Festival, 10th edition of FESPACO, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (1987), Pan African Writers’ Association, Accra, Ghana. Tam was at a time film consultant to Rivers State Council for Arts and Culture, the director of Rivers State Documentary Series, and consultant/scriptwriter to NTA Network on Documentaries. He was founding executive of the Photographers’ Association of Nigeria (PAN).
His publications include the photodocumentary, 1979: A Peep into History and Culture and A Benin Coronation: Oba Erediauwa (2011). He was a contributor to the 2018 book African Photographer J. A. Green: Re-imagining the Indigenous and the Colonial (edited by Martha G. Anderson and Lisa Aronson).
In April 2011, upon my recommendation Tam Fiofori was invited to the National Film Institute (NFI), Jos to conduct a documentary film workshop. I authorised purchase of his publications 1979: A Peep into History and Culture and A Benin Coronation: Oba Erediauwa (2011). He penned me a thank you note, “Dear Afolabi, Thank you for ordering my books for the NFI and yourself. Hope you like them. I suppose the quality control and contrast could be better in the BENIN CORONATION book but time and the wahala of customs made me settle for a local Nigeria. I am happy that the book is finally out. As for the 1979 book I’m pleased with the contrast achieved in the B & W images. Tam Fiofori, 27Th April 2011”..
As a critic, Tam is equally unsparing of himself and his works. He is always striving for excellence. And he did achieve excellence as attested to by the eminent critic and journalist Lindsay Barrett who referred to Fiofori as “Nigeria’s iconic photographic genius”.
Eighty (80) hearty cheers to a living legend, Tam Fiofori, born June 17, 1942. Happy birthday!
*Adesanya, a filmmaker, television director, photo-artist, writer, critic and film historian.
