Over viewing the Drivers Dexterity George Osodi’s Oeuvre on Safety on the Nigerian Road

Using the censure of images culled from Drivers Dexterity and drawing attention to these shapes as
profiles of the condition of a major infrastructure I have employed them as vestigial to a narrative that
embodies diverse contexts. These inflect the identity and history of the Nigerian nation. The art work
is the censure on which the fleeting memoriam of the discourse of the everyday lives of the real
people is grounded: “Art makes the experiences of time spatially perceptible by forcing what is ever
fleeting into the calm framework of a symbol” [1] Reflecting, therefore, on the consequent rhetoric’s
inherent in the linguistic/pictorial/cultural turn and the techniques deployed by the photographer to
affect presence, a reading of the existentialist world view that has shaped the mentality of the real
people, hence their conditions of life in contrast to that of the privileged few; in the utilisation of a
derelict infrastructure; is engaged. In fact, the employment of symbols, as scaffolding that hold the
story inflecting an identity; and the phono-centric images, are invaluable synergy in the actualisation
of a synchronic analysis. Drawing attention to the ‘pains of others’ this essay explores what is to be
done. George Osodi’s images go beyond the showmanship of the anesthetizing and picturesque
devices of contemporary Pictorialist photography. These images draw the perceptive viewer to an
intense level of seminal appreciation of his subjective interior space.