LAST DAY IN LAGOS, edited by Oluremi C. Onabanjo

299pp., illus, hardback, d.w., Johannesburg & New York, 2022

A selection from the more than 1 500 photographs Marilyn Nance made while serving as the photographer for the North American delegation. FESTAC'77, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, took place in Lagos, Nigeria, from January 15 to February 12, 1977.

"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 thirty days in what was essentially a temporary Pan-African nation. Then this book is for you ... These images reflect my romantic notions of Pan-African unity, my nostalgia for the incredible celebration of world culture, and hint at the terror to come after the festivals end." Marilyn Nance, from the afterword

Marilyn Nance (b. 1953) is a 2020 Arts Matters Grant recipient and a two-time finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Award in Humanities Photography. She lives in Brooklyn.