Marilyn Nance: Last Day in Lagos
A focused study on a singular African American photographer, through an archival encounter with her documentation of the landmark FESTAC’77 festival.
From January 15 to February 12, 1977, more than 15,000 artists, intellectuals and performers from 55 nations worldwide gathered in Lagos, Nigeria, for the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, also known as FESTAC’77. Taking place in the heyday of Nigeria’s oil wealth and following the African continent’s potent decade of decolonization, FESTAC’77 was the peak of Pan-Africanist expression. Among the musicians, writers, artists and cultural leaders in attendance were Ellsworth Ausby, Milford Graves, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Samella Lewis, Audre Lorde, Winnie Owens, Miriam Makeba, Valerie Maynard, Queen Mother Moore and Sun Ra.
While serving as the photographer for the US contingent of the North American delegation, Brooklyn-based photographer Marilyn Nance made more than 1,500 images throughout the course of the festival—one of the most comprehensive photographic accounts of FESTAC’77. Drawing from Nance’s extensive archive, most of which has never before been published, Last Day in Lagos chronicles the exuberant intensity and sociopolitical significance of this extraordinary event.
Last Day in Lagos was edited by Oluremi C. Onabanjo and includes a foreword by Julie Mehretu and an interview between Nance and Onabanjo, was released on October 1 2022, tied to Nigerian Independence Day.
Over the course of five decades, Marilyn Nance has produced images of unique moments in the cultural history of the US and the African Diaspora.
About the Author
Visual artist Marilyn Nance has produced exceptional photographs of unique moments in the cultural history of the United States and the African Diaspora, and possesses an archive of images of late 20th century African American life.
A two-time finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Award in Humanistic Photography for her body of work on African American spiritual culture in America, Nance has photographed the Black Indians of New Orleans, an African village in South Carolina, churches in Brooklyn, and the first Black church in America. She is recognized by the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklore Programs & Cultural Studies as a community folklore scholar, an individual who has shown a significant contribution to the collection, preservation and presentation of traditional culture in a community or region. Her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Library of Congress.
Nance’s photographs have been published in The World History of Photography, History of Women in Photography, and The Black Photographers Annual. Her writing, which often accompanies her photographs, has been published by Aperture, The New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Friends of Photography. She is the recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in Photography (2000 and 1989), Nonfiction Literature (1993), and the New York State Council of the Arts Individual Artists Grant (1987).
A graduate of ITP, New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (Tisch School of the Arts), Nance is an African American digital pioneer; she created her “Soulsista” website in 1994, was one of the Internet’s first radio disc jockeys in 1996, and in 1998 produced an interactive web site based on an African divination system. Nance served as the Curator of Photography for the first Digital Schomburg Web Project, selecting for Internet publication, over 500 images of 19th century African Americans, from collections of the research libraries of the New York Public Library. Additionally, Nance holds a B.F.A. in Communications Graphic Design from Pratt Institute, and an M.F.A. in Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Marilyn Nance encourages people of all ages to protect and organize their personal archives and see themselves as designers, producers, and owners of information.
Nance is the matriarch of The Santana Project, an intergenerational, interdisciplinary art collective.
