Tender Photos is a digital platform for African photography and visual storytelling, co-founded by Emmanuel Iduma and Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀. Our aim is to contribute to nuanced and layered perceptions of the continent by publishing narratives about the people, places, and events pictured in photographs, while promoting the work of visual storytellers and photographers.
The flagship project of the platform, Tender Photo, was launched as a weekly Substack newsletter authored by Emmanuel in February 2022. From then until August 2025, we featured the work of over 170 photographers, championing their ideas about photography and ensuring they are discoverable by a global photography community. The newsletter is circulated to over 4,000 subscribers weekly. We have also collaborated with writers to produce special issues of the newsletter publication, drawing from our dynamic digital archive. For each edition of the publication, we featured a photograph taken on the continent, with a short descriptive caption, and a statement on the particulars of the photograph by the photographer. This participatory format produced an eclectic repository of ideas on the continued relevance of photography in an image-saturated world. The newsletter has been profiled in The Conversation, Contemporary And, Africa e Mediterraneo, and Kultur Austauch.
From October 2025 until November 2026, we are focused on our next publication project, Tender Visions, a new cross-disciplinary commissioning program for photographers and writers based on the African continent, in partnership with the Open Society Foundations. Each week, you’ll view a portfolio, read an essay or short story, or listen to a conversation about the featured work.
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Tender Photos has developed an extensive network of photographers, writers, curators, and editors. We work with a growing list of partners to develop cross-disciplinary projects using photography and visual storytelling as a starting point. Contact us to discuss potential collaborations.
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