Nigeria Ever After

NIGERIA EVER AFTER: Weddings in Nigeria are not private affairs – they are public displays. The music is loud, the jollof rice is plentiful, and the festivities go on for hours. Everyone is invited, and those who aren’t come anyway. My project is about the fantasy world created by the elaborate stylization of weddings in Nigeria. These images are not created for the consumption of the couple, but rather use weddings as an opportunity for narrative: moments of flux and change are celebrated through ritual displays of class, gender and allegiance. A wedding with thousands of guests is one way to visualize just how big Nigeria's economy is – 160 million people live in Nigeria and it has the second highest GDP in Africa. Money trickles down from the 2.5 million barrels of crude oil produced per day by the Oil and Gas people. The rich and poor live vastly different lives in this unequal nation, but, spending all you can, primping, posturing, and looking good on wedding day is a practice that bridges all class barriers. These images explore what it costs to get married in Nigeria: what money can and can’t buy, and the quiet moments during frenzied ceremony.

Photography is my means of discovering the world is infinitely more interesting than I ever could have imagined: I’ve crashed dozens of Nigerian weddings and seen the scale of wealth in Africa’s biggest economy. I’ve met Muslim women who write romance novels in the rapidly Islamicizing Sahel who have radically changed my idea of what it means to wear a hijab. I’ve learned that the heroes we canonize are just as flawed as our enemies are human. My work has been commissioned by and featured in the Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, NYT Lens, and elsewhere. My documentary work has been featured on National Geographic’s Proof, New York Times Lens Blog, Time’s Lightbox, New Yorker’s Photobooth, Wired’s Raw File My work has been recognized by American Photo 30, PDN Annual 2013, Flash Forward 12 and 13, the International Photography Awards, FotoweekDC, and more. I’ve done a residency at the African Artist Foundation in Lagos, Nigeria, and been awards a grant by the Pulitzer Center for work in Liberia. My images have been show in galleries and screenings in New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Lagos, Istanbul, Milan, and other places. In addition to my work as a photographer, I am also a lecturer at the Milano School of International Affairs at the New School in New York.