About Mayowa Akande
Mayowa Akande is a photographer and visual artist based in Sunderland. Originally from Lagos, Nigeria, he spent over a decade working as an architect and designer before making the move to North East England in December 2022, and he has been happily falling in love with the region ever since.
Sunderland City Hall, Photographed by Mayowa Akande
His camera goes wherever the life is. You'll find him capturing events and performances around Sunderland, wandering the coastline from Roker to Whitburn chasing the light, or deep in one of his personal projects exploring places, identity, migration and cultural memory.
For Mayowa, photography is a kind of archiving, a way of keeping hold of places and people before they change, whether that's a Victorian bridge, a stretch of forgotten foreshore, or a face in a crowd at a festival.
Hendon Beach, Photographed by Mayowa Akande
At the heart of it all is a simple fascination; spaces and places, and how they form us. That architect's eye never quite switches off.
He sees structure and rhythm everywhere, but what really excites him in his evolving practice is how the cultures, buildings, streets and shorelines we move through every day quietly shape who we become, and how everyday people carry stories of identity and migration with them.
Moving between two cultures himself has only deepened that curiosity, and much of his work asks a joyful question: what does it mean to make a new home, and how do you photograph the feeling of belonging?
Wearmouth Bridge (Structural Detail), Photographed by Mayowa Akande
His work has been exhibited internationally, including at Black Box Gallery in Portland, USA, and 13b Gallery in Slovenia, with recognition through the Bath Open Art Prize and SeeingHappy's Imagining Wellbeing award. He is a Member of the Royal Photographic Society.
Sunderland Fiesta, Photographed by Mayowa Akande
Mayowa is always looking forward, and there is plenty on the horizon: Solo exhibitions, new artistic projects, and bringing his work to life through augmented and virtual reality.
Having spent years photographing how places shape us, he is excited by the idea of letting people step inside those places, blending photography with immersive technology so that a viewer doesn't just look at a coastline or a city street, but stands in it, moves through it and feels it for themselves.
You can follow Mayowa's journey by visiting his website, or following @Akande.O.Mayowa on Instagram.
Hear Mayowa Akande on the ArtyParti podcast:
I had the pleasure of meeting Mayowa for the first time at the ‘Sunderland Art Festival’ in 2025. Mayowa’s voice appears sporadically throughout the episode, mixed with the voices of 30-or-so other artists and creatives as part of this mosaic-structured listen.
“It's a good initiative in the sense that you tend to bring local artists to the fore. A lot of people need opportunities like this to be seen and to be known. And I think this kind of festival brings them to the fore; for people to see their work, and bring the communities together.”
Mayowa’s burning passion for photography, and the inherent potential for the medium, is clear in how he articulates his practice. Here are some of his reflections:
“I love how photography freezes time. Photography makes you look back in history. It almost makes you feel like you were there. … I just love the fact you could freeze time and just tell a story with photography.
“The best photographs have made humanity react a certain way towards certain causes. I mean, just looking at the photographs just makes you feel a certain way. And then it just doesn't make you want, you know, such things to happen again.”
