Rainbow Rowell said that art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something. That was my takeaway as I viewed Titilayo Samuel Olufemi’s photographs during My World, My View, a group exhibition held at Newark Works, Bath, from 23 May to 6 June 2026. While many of the works in the exhibition focused on everyday scenes, local environments, or personal landscapes, Olufemi’s contribution approached place through the lens of historical continuity. His photographs ask how cities remember, and how traces of earlier worlds persist within contemporary life.
The two photographs exhibited by Olufemi were made in Albania. Neither image relies on spectacle. Instead, both focus on ordinary urban spaces where history remains embedded within the physical landscape. The works are united by a shared concern with architecture as a vessel of memory, revealing the ways in which the built environment accumulates layers of time.
Installation view of My World, My View, Fringe Arts Bath, 2026, featuring works by Titilayo Samuel Olufemi
The strongest of the two photographs depicts an archaeological site surrounded by contemporary buildings. Seen from an elevated position, the image presents a circular expanse of grass enclosed by exposed stone foundations and fragments of excavation. Apartment blocks and modern structures occupy the edges of the frame, creating a visual dialogue between preservation and development. The photograph’s compositional restraint is central to its effectiveness. Olufemi avoids dramatic angles or overt visual intervention, allowing the site itself to communicate its complexity.
What emerges is a subtle meditation on historical persistence. The excavation appears almost incidental within the surrounding urban environment, yet it occupies the compositional centre of the image. The photograph suggests that history survives not as a monument detached from everyday life, but as something continually negotiated within contemporary space. Ancient and modern structures coexist without resolution, neither dominating the other.
The second photograph centres on a clock tower positioned between modern buildings. Here, the contrast between architectural periods becomes more explicit. The tower functions as a vertical anchor within the composition, its stone surface and traditional form standing in visual opposition to the geometric facades that surround it. Yet the photograph avoids a simplistic narrative of old versus new. Instead, Olufemi presents the structures as participants in a shared urban environment. The image is less concerned with conflict than with coexistence.
Both works reveal an interest in the relationship between memory and place. Architecture is treated not simply as form but as evidence of time. The photographs invite viewers to consider how cities carry traces of multiple histories simultaneously, often within the same visual field. This sensitivity to temporal layering distinguishes the work from more conventional travel or architectural photography. The images are not records of landmarks; they are reflections on how the past remains active within the present.
Within the context of My World, My View, Olufemi’s contribution expands the exhibition’s central theme beyond personal observation. His photographs suggest that a view is never entirely contemporary. Every landscape, every street, and every building exists within a larger continuum of history. What appears before us is shaped as much by what has disappeared as by what remains visible.
The success of these photographs lies in their quietness. They do not seek dramatic revelation. Instead, they reward sustained looking, gradually revealing the complex relationships between memory, architecture, and urban transformation. Olufemi approaches place not as a fixed location but as an accumulation of stories, histories, and traces that continue to shape the present.
In an exhibition devoted to individual perspectives on the world, these works offer a compelling reminder that every view contains more than the eye can immediately perceive. Beneath the surfaces of contemporary cities lie older landscapes, older structures, and older histories. Olufemi’s photographs make those layers visible, transforming ordinary urban scenes into reflections on time itself.
