“I love storytelling through photography, and I have fun with the images and styling, bringing that element of fun that West African studio and portrait photographers have always been about”, she says, speaking to me on the road with patchy wifi whilst traveling to Chad in West Africa for a new project. Ruth lists the photographers Ojeikere, Fosso, Sidibe, Keita and “so many more” as her inspiration – West African studio photographers who “captured and paved the way”, she explains. Ruth has a way of capturing the cultural movements we should know about from across the world, particularly Nigeria. In this shoot featuring her friend Diana, as is now trademark for Ruth, she has created it “free from tricks, not glossy and raw, I wanted to express real joy and Diana's personality.”.

Ruth’s Instagram account is full of images expressing the joy and creative culture of communities across the world, including the nurses of Nigeria’s Anambra state, Nigeria’s first skateboarding crew and her own aunties Titi and Mercy. Born in Nigeria and raised in Yorkshire, England, she views photography as having a social responsibility, casting her lens on the bikers of Ibadan in Nigeria and Erykah Badu in New York, among others. “As a photographer, from a young age I have always loved photographers that assume a social function particularly in every day, real life experiences”, she says, noting that she often features family members in her photographs to convey this real life element. She tells me she has always had an appreciation for “photographs that hold a memory of a loved one, or one that transports some memory across distance or time”. This was part of her motivation to develop her unique take on studio portraiture – “that’s where my backdrops, personal props and hairstyles and so on come to play”.