Dola Posh: ‘It wasn’t me anymore’

Dola Posh A composition of two portraits of Dola Posh with her daughter. On the left she is wrapped in a green cloth and cradles her little daughter. A church arch in the background frames the two in the portrait. On the right, with a red scarf on her head, wrapped in a red and orange cloth hugging her daughter. The bright celestial background makes it look like they are sitting in the clouds.

Dola Posh has multiple identities: photographer; women; Nigerian; mother; British.

However, after giving birth, she was no longer sure who she was.

Six days after her daughter was born, she was lying in a bed in an English hospital, in the middle of a Covid lockdown.

He worried about how his life had changed and whether he would ever return to doing what he loved: taking photographs.

Unable to visit her, family members continued calling to check on her and the baby. After a difficult pregnancy, Dola felt pressured.

His mother was thousands of miles away, in the place she had left two years earlier: Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city.

All of this put his “brain in a very dark place… I thought, ‘It’s me; The baby is born, I’m still me.’ But no, it was no longer me.”

Loss of identity may be one of the causes of postpartum depression, which disproportionately affects black women. Although she didn’t recognize it at the time, this was what Dola was suffering from.

Dola began taking self-portraits to document her struggle with depression.

Dola Posh A pale looking Dola Posh is lying on her bed with a green head covered in white spots. His face is illuminated by golden light. — Dola began taking self-portraits to document her struggle with depression.

Once out of the hospital, she was almost immediately bombarded with unsolicited advice.

There was “too much talk, too much control over how I should raise the child. In a way that also affected my mind. It made me feel like I didn’t know what I was doing. “They didn’t give me the opportunity to be a mother.”

There’s a simplicity to the way the 33-year-old talks about the events of 2020. This time she resists tears, but she has cried… a lot.

One night, exhausted from feeling zombie-like, from lack of sleep, and from the isolation and mundanity of her new existence, a voice in her head told her to take her own life.

Dola found solace in photography and this first image she created for the series was when Monioluwa was three months old.

Dola Posh Dola Posh wearing a red headscarf and a white dress is breastfeeding her daughter sitting on the edge of a bed with a blue sheet. — Dola found solace in photography and this first image she created for the series was when Monioluwa was three months old.

Emotionally unmoored, she clung to her blanket as if it were a life jacket. Her baby, Monioluwa, which means “I have God” in Yoruba, was at her side. I sang songs from home.

She then made a midnight call to her health visitor who, fortunately, answered and agreed to visit her.

“I will bury my head in shame, I felt so ashamed because it’s like I’m not even a good mother. “I don’t have the strength to be a mother.”

Dola was convinced to see a therapist, who encouraged her to use her camera as a way to deal with her feelings.

Monioluwa fell seriously ill when she was nine months old, and while caring for her baby, Dola’s anxiety increased: she says her “soul was lost.”

Dola Posh Dola Posh wearing a black headscarf and blue cloth over a white dress stares with a blank expression at the camera. She holds her daughter in her hands. — Monioluwa fell seriously ill when she was nine months old, and while caring for her baby, Dola’s anxiety increased: she says her “soul was lost.”

Learning the trade in Nigeria while studying marine biology, she stood out from the crowd with her dyed gold hair and pink boots.

Dola began to gain a reputation in the male-dominated world of fashion and celebrity photography in Lagos. But he gravitated toward portraiture because it allowed him to document people’s lives and encouraged his subjects to share something deeper.

For therapy, she turned the lens on herself and, using an app on her phone to control the camera remotely, began producing a portfolio of shots of her with Monioluwa.

The portrait of mother and baby, inspired by representations of the Virgin and child, is one of the fundamental motifs of the Western artistic tradition.

Dola’s photographs fit this mode, but the connection was unconscious at first and it took a mentor to point it out.

Looking at Monioluwa fast asleep when she was 10 months old, Dola wondered if she would ever experience that dream again.

Dola Posh Dola Posh wears an orange headscarf and a white nightgown. She is holding a lamp and standing next to a bed where her daughter is sleeping. — Looking at Monioluwa fast asleep when she was 10 months old, Dola wondered if she would ever experience that dream again.

He was raised in a religious home: his father was a bishop in a Nigerian church. On the walls of their house there were paintings of Mary and Jesus, and the image of the mother and child was in Bibles and hymnals.

“The colors: green, red and gold; the golden frames and the light shine; growing up in that environment, it was all there in my subconscious.”

All of this later manifested itself in the way she composed and illuminated her portraits.

“Sometimes you do things, you don’t even know why you do them and then when you sit back and reflect it’s like, ‘Oh!’”

The headscarf or veil, which had been part of her church-going uniform, also became an essential element of her work.

“When I put on the veil, I no longer felt like that empty person. I felt more like myself… I was reconnecting with my family, I felt like I had their essence with me.”

The project was beginning to help Dola better understand her emotions.

Dola needed to figure out how to be the best mom possible while also working as a professional photographer.

Dola Posh Dola Posh, wearing a red head covering, combs her daughter's hair as they sit on a bed with a blue head covering. Next to them is a candle in a jar. — Dola needed to figure out how to be the best mom possible while also working as a professional photographer.

She says that when she began to share her story “that motherhood was not all joys and I suffered from postpartum depression, that opened a door for me to no longer be ashamed.

“Now I’m starting to work on the stories of what really happened and the darkness, how I came out of it, and trying to represent that through images.”

Earlier this year, Dola won an award from camera maker Leica that allowed her to continue her series and encourage more women, particularly black women, to break the stigma around postpartum depression.

“I want a world where black mothers don’t have to carry so much burden and feel like they have to go through that journey alone and I want them to look in the media and see a reflection of themselves trying to make things work.”

In the UK, black women are more likely to suffer from postpartum depression than others, the Mental Health Foundation charity says. The reasons are complex, but Dola believes that being more open is vital to addressing the issue.

“It’s new for a woman to stand there and say: ‘I almost ended my life, I’m not ashamed of it. I’m still an artist, I’m still a woman and I have something to say.’”