By 3.00pm today, hundreds of friends and lovers of art and photography will gather at the popular All Saints Church Montgomery road Yaba Lagos to celebrate a high society persona and ace photographer, Sunmi Smart-Cole as he clocks 75.
Sunmi Smart-Cole: A Man of Many Interests Sunmi Smart-Cole, born September 25, 1941, in Port Harcourt, of Nigerian-Sierra Leonean parentage, is known for his versatility and range of interests. His fame as a gardener and involvement in environmental groups, such as the Friends of the Earth, and the Lagos Horticultural Society (as a founding member) and the Sierra Club, are reflected in his sensitivity for natural objects.
His love of music and fashion, and his varied experience from newspaper photo-journalism to being a father of two young men, enrich and inform his work as a photographer. Although, he is proficient in different artistic fields, Sunmi’s early education stopped when he became an elementary school teacher at age 15. His visual sense was already in evidence when at 17, he started training as an architectural draughtsman.
Buildings he subsequently designed included the country home of Sierra Leone’s late Prime Minister, Sir Albert Margai. Sunmi is also an accomplished soul music drummer and jazz percussionist. He was a founding member of the ‘60s ensemble, Soul Assembly. He taught himself to play trap-drums in 1964, by watching the then Fela Ransome-Kuti and his mother, Mrs Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti convert highlife drummer, John Okoh, into a jazz drummer .
Smart-Cole used his lap as his drums. Sunmi has performed or “sat-in” with well-known jazz musicians such as the late alto saxophonist, Julian “Canonball” Adderley; organist, Jimmy Smith; trumpeter Dizzy Gilespie ; and the late instrumentalist, Fela Ransome-Kuti Sunmi has also featured with pianist, McCoy Tyner; singer and key-board player, Segun Bucknor; the late pianist, Art Alade and The Jazz Preachers of Lagos, Nigeria; drummer George B. Williams and The Jazz Disciples of Freetown, Sierra Leone; tenor saxophonist Yusef Lateef; and bass player, Reggie Walkman. Sunmi was an original member of Jon Hendrick’s jazz musical, Evolution of the Blues (performed at the Paul Mason Winery, Saratoga, California, USA in 1982. Sunmi organised the first Nigerian Jazz Festival in 1964 at King’s College Hall in Lagos.
In 1967, his barber shop, Sunmi’s Place in Yaba, was a trend-setting center for the fashionable Lagos elite. In 1972, he went to the United States, where he worked as an electronic drafter and technical illustrator. His strong visual sense led him to embark on a photography course in 1976, at Foothill College in Los Altos, California. Sunmi held his first solo exhibition at Stanford University, California in 1978.
In December 1978, he was invited by the National Council for Arts and Culture to mount an exhibition at the National Arts Theatre, Lagos. In 1983, Sunmi became the first photo editor of the newly established Guardian newspaper.
Then subsequently, editorship of the weekly social paper, Lagos Life , gave Sunmi the opportunity to design a newspaper which reached a high standard both visually and in terms of content. Sunmi’s awards include NIJ Students Union award, Third Commonwealth Photography Exhibition award in Hong Kong (1983); the Jadeas Trust award for creativity (2001); and the first TINAPAMovie Awards, Achievement in Entertainment- Golden Camera Award in 2007; The VIVANTE award ; amongst others.
His first book, The Photography of Sunmi Smart-Cole, with foreword by Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka (in black and white), was published by Bookcraft Ltd in collaboration with Daily Times of Nigeria, Lagos in 1991. Smart-Cole’s second book was A Pictorial View: The Foreign Policy Landmarks of the Babangida Administration in 1993. Sunmi’s third coffee-table book “Sunmi’s Lens- medium between man and nature”, (also with foreword by Wole Soyinka ), was originally published in September, 2011. Sunmi has held over 36 exhibitions in five continents – including exhibitions in Nigerian missions in Addis Ababa, Brasilia and London (to promote the country’s image) as a cultural ambassador.
(History culled from an article by Prof. Jane Bryce and Jide Adeniyi-Jones)
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