The man took out special time on his recent 62nd birthday to savour the camera which has put him into more trouble than he can be able to count. He was once nearly sacked from the newspaper he then worked in for publishing the out-of-wedlock son of a former vice-president of Nigeria. He had to go into hiding when he published the photograph of a never-seen second wife of a very flamboyant First Republic politician. He was beaten and locked up for taking a photograph of the Chief Judge of the then Bendel State in party mood with the army commander and police commissioner which he captioned “Gold meets Gin and Whisky”, a coinage from their names. A maddened parent of a Page 3 Girl he photographed nearly had him murdered for his efforts. As a photojournalist, Godwin Usidamen stood tall where even generals feared to tread. His philosophy can be summed up thusly: “Get the shot even if the heavens fall!”
The art of publishing photographs
and being damned for the affront has been the forte of the affable Godwin in
his decades of work at NBC/TV, The
Guardian, Punch, Vanguard, Daily Times, Sentinel Magazine etc. At his 26
Ibidun Street, off Ojuelegba Road, Surulere, Lagos operational base, Godwin is
not today into photojournalism but undertakes industrial, advertising,
modelling and general photography through his agency PapaGee Productions. The
62-year-old grandfather may appear retired but he is definitely not tired, and
may yet stage a comeback into the charged battlefield of telling great news
through greater photography.
Born
September 11, 1950 in the rural locale of Uokha in Owan East Local Government
Area of Edo State, Godwin had his early education in his hometown and at
Obiaruku in today’s Delta State before enrolling as a typist because there was
no money to send the young lad to secondary school. He left Obiaruku for Auchi
in 1964 with his elder brother, trekking the long distance because of lack of
money. A year after he was taken to Ibadan by her mother’s younger brother who
worked in the Central Bank branch there. At Ibadan he underwent apprenticeship
in electrical installation and plumbing. He bore witness to the first military
coup in January 1966 at Ibadan as well as the July 1966 counter-coup in which
Head of State Aguiyi-Ironsi was murdered in the selfsame Ibadan. By the end of
1966 his maternal uncle was transferred to Benin, but he could no longer
continue his electrical installation apprenticeship in Benin and was now more
or less used as a houseboy which he didn’t like.
When the
Biafra war broke out he decided on the spur of the moment to find his way to
Lagos. He somehow flagged down a Volkswagen car that brought him to Lagos, and
to the home of his shocked elder brother who could not understand how Godwin
evaded the Biafran soldiers who had overrun the then Midwest Region. He was
declared missing back home as nobody knew where he was. He became apprenticed
to a refrigerator and air-conditioner installer on a pay of one Pound a week. He
left the work after four months because the air-conditioners were much too
heavy for the gangling youth. He joined his elder brother Augustine Usidamen in
his painting trade, painting all night and hawking the paintings all day
through Palm Grove, Iddo, Carter Bridge, Marina etc.
Tired of
the painting and hawking, Godwin told his brother he wanted to learn the art of
photography instead. He thus became apprenticed in 1968 to Pa Johnson Ojeikere,
an uncle of his who had his studio in the Yaba area and worked for Lintas
Advertising West Africa. After the war, in the early 1970s, he told Pa Ojeikere
he was tired of being an apprentice and wanted to actually practice the art on
his own. Another brother of his bought for him the necessary working tools, and
barely three months after he bought a sports bicycle and had his business name
emblazoned thus: Goddy International
Photos.
In 1972 he
alongside his friend Raphael Ikharo founded the company More-Sell Photo Works
that did jobs with agencies engaged in advertising and modeling, even getting
jobs from Lintas where Pa Ojeikere reigned. By 1974 he had bought a car, and it
was while washing it on a certain day that he met Usman Abudah who advised him
to go into photojournalism instead of restricting himself to just advertising
photography.
While
working as a freelance photographer he went to then NBC/TV to do some work in
the darkroom only for some menacing soldiers to dash in, seizing him together
with his camera. The soldiers took him to Barbeach to serve as the only still
photographer to take shots of the execution of Dimka and JD Gomwalk who had
been convicted for leading the coup that killed Head of State Murtala Muhammed
on February 13, 1976. That was his Baptism of Fire.
He left
Lagos for Benin in 1977, working for Punch
because Usman Abudah had given him a letter of introduction to Sam Amuka.
He covered the entire Bendel State until resigning from Punch in 1980. It was good old Uncle Sam Amuka who again gave
Godwin a job in Lagos when he set up Vanguard
in 1984. Usidamen took the photographs of the early Vanguard buildings in
Kirikiri Canal. He left the Vanguard in
1985, and was employed at The Guardian on
the recommendation of the photo editor Sunmi Smart-Clole. Godwin would later
work for the Daily Times, Sentinel
Magazine and the Sunmi Smart-Cole Gallery in Yaba. Now he runs his own
photo enterprise PapaGee Digital Productions on Ibidun Street.
“I have
still so much to contribute,” the affable Godwin Usidamen says to me, flashing
his trademark smile as I gleaned through his range of very rare photographs
which will gain remarkable plaudits in a public exhibition.
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