CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/1/2022

If you believe in Afrofuturism and a glorious African past, 'Marilyn Nance: Last Day in Lagos' is for you

Featured spreads are from Marilyn Nance: Last Day in Lagos, the staff-favorite documentary photobook launching this weekend at The Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA). Nance, just 23 years old in 1977, when she made more than 1,500 photographs of FESTAC ’77 in Lagos, Nigeria, concludes her resounding Afterword: "If you want to see what it looked like to have 17,000 Africans gathered together from across the continent and the diaspora, living, sharing, thinking and performing together for 30 days in what was essentially a temporary Pan-African nation. Then this book is for you. I am here to tell you that it happened. I was there. This is what they didn’t teach you in Art History class—or your Black History class. These images of time and place reflect my romantic notions of Pan-African unity, my nostalgia for this incredible celebration of world culture, and hint at the terrors to come after the festival's end. For this reason, this book of FESTAC ’77 photographs is named Last Day in Lagos."