Dr Ajamu X
Dr Ajamu X (Hons FRPS) is a darkroom / fine art photographic artist, archival curator and co-founder of Spit & Spider Press. His photographs, rooted in process, unapologetically celebrate the black queer body, the erotic senses and sensuality/sensuousness.
Working across both analogue and digital, his practice centres traditional 19th Century printing processes, in particular the Platinum print. His visual philosophy refuses the usual ‘flattening’ of images by black queer photographers into staid notions of identity- thinking, representation, or a sociopolitical framing. Instead, he foregrounds the sensual – material attributes of the wet darkroom, the photographic act and print. His work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, and alternative spaces nationally and internationally, and is held in collections including Tate Britain, the Arts Council Collection, the Walker Gallery, Autograph – ABP, the Martin Parr Foundation, and the National Portrait Gallery. In 2022, he was canonised in his home town, Huddersfield by The Transpennine Travelling Sisters as The Patron Saint of Darkrooms and received an honorary fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society. In 2025, Tate published a photographic monograph on his work.
