Isabel Okoro does not photograph the world as it is. She builds one. In a PhotoVogue conversation with Alessia Glaviano, Okoro discussed Constructing Eternity, the project in which she has assembled an entire visual universe, and the terms she uses to describe it are unusually precise for a photographer.
Born in Lagos in 2001 and based in Toronto, Okoro has coined a word for the space her images occupy. She calls it a normatopia: a place that considers the tension between a harsh reality and a utopia, and chooses to rest and thrive in the humanly achievable sweet spot in between.
World-Building as Photography
Okoro treats each image as a component of a larger universe rather than a standalone photograph. Eternity has its own logic, atmosphere and emotional register, and individual frames function as glimpses into a reality adjacent to this one.
This is a deliberate method rather than a stylistic preference. She has said that Eternity revealed itself to her: through 2019 she was making work containing recurring motifs, the sun, the moon, young Black people in natural space, and in 2020 she returned to those archives, saw the common threads, and decided to build the world on purpose.
The trigger she cites is specific. Revisiting Solange's When I Get Home and its accompanying short film showed her what deliberate world-building could do, and the pandemic period, alongside the global movement for Black freedom, gave her a reason to construct something hopeful rather than merely document something difficult. She has described the project as a personal practice of activism: a challenge to consider everything around her and dare to imagine it differently.
For photographers who feel constrained by the expectation that a camera records reality, the position is expansive. A photograph can be a fragment of an invented world, and the investment required is not equipment. It is consistency.
How Eternity Was Actually Built
The most useful thing about Okoro's practice is that the method is legible, and it does not depend on a large budget.
Start from the archive. She found Eternity by looking at work she had already made and noticing what repeated. A world revealed itself in the motifs she could not stop photographing.
Name it. Giving the universe a name, a term and a set of rules converts a group of images into a project. A named world can be discussed, exhibited and written about; an unnamed mood cannot.
Define the palette. Colour is the clearest signal of a shared universe, and Okoro's images are saturated and consistent. Choosing a palette and holding it across bodies of work is what makes separate photographs read as one place.
Keep the cast. A recurring group of people, photographed repeatedly in different configurations, produces the sense of a population rather than a series of individuals.
Use landscape as setting. Nature appears in the work as a place where the invented world happens, which is what stops it from being a set of portraits in nice light.
Connect the diaspora. The work addresses the relationship between Nigeria and the diaspora, and the specificity of that subject is what gives the invented world a stake rather than a mood.
Publish it as an object. Okoro self-published Friends in Eternity as a book, which is what turns a body of work into a thing that exists independently of a feed.
The Personal as Universal
Okoro's images are deeply personal, rooted in her own experience, memory and cultural context, and their power comes from how far that specificity travels. The most particular images are usually the most resonant, because specificity is what makes a world feel real.
The mechanism is worth stating precisely. A general image asks the viewer to supply everything, and most viewers do not. A specific image supplies a world and invites the viewer into it, and the invitation is what makes the work legible to people who share none of the photographer's biography.
That has a practical consequence for anyone building a body of work. The instinct to make the work universal by removing specifics produces photographs that belong to nobody. The instinct to make it as specific as possible produces a world other people can enter.
There is also a career dimension, which Okoro's record illustrates. Her work has been commissioned by titles including Dazed, Essence, Vogue and Apple, two pieces were acquired by a major public gallery collection, and she has held an artist residency in Toronto. None of that was built on generic imagery. It was built on a universe with a name, a palette and a population, developed over years.
Practical Tips
- Treat your body of work as a coherent universe rather than a collection of individual images.
- Use photography to build worlds, not only to document existing ones.
- Start from your own archive and notice what you keep photographing.
- Name the world and give it rules. Names are what make projects discussable.
- Hold a colour palette across the work so separate images read as one place.
- Photograph the same people repeatedly so the world has a population.
- Let your images be deeply personal. Specificity is what creates universality.
- Publish the work as an object, a book or a zine, so it exists outside a platform.
Further Reading
Conclusion
Isabel Okoro's Eternity is an argument that photography's function is not limited to recording. A photographer can assemble a world with its own light, palette and people, and can do so as an act of imagination rather than escape, particularly when the reality being imagined away is not especially welcoming.
The method is available to anyone: find the motifs already in your archive, name the world they imply, commit to a palette, keep your cast, and let the images accumulate into a place rather than a portfolio. Okoro started photographing friends in her spare time and arrived at a named universe, a published book and work in a public collection. The route from one to the other was consistency, not equipment.
FAQ
What does world-building mean in photography?
Treating your photographs as components of a coherent universe with its own visual language, atmosphere and logic, rather than as standalone images documenting the existing world. The frames become glimpses into a place rather than records of one.
What is a normatopia?
A term Okoro coined to describe a space that considers the tension between a harsh reality and a utopia and chooses to rest and thrive in the humanly achievable middle. It describes the register her invented world occupies rather than a purely idealised one.
How can I develop a consistent visual universe in my work?
Look at your archive for recurring elements, colour palettes, lighting, subjects and moods, then make those repetitions deliberate. Name the world, define its palette and keep photographing the same cast so the images accumulate into a place.
Who is Isabel Okoro?
A Nigerian visual artist born in Lagos in 2001 and based in Toronto. She created the project Constructing Eternity, self-published the book Friends in Eternity, and has produced work for clients including Dazed, Essence, Vogue and Apple.
Do I need a studio or a budget to build a world like this?
No. Okoro's universe is made from natural light, landscapes, colour and the people around her. The expensive part is the commitment to consistency over years rather than any single production.
Why does specificity matter more than universality?
Because a general image requires the viewer to supply everything, and most will not. A specific one supplies a world and invites the viewer in, which is how work rooted in one particular place and community travels far beyond it.