Nigeria Ever After

• Prize
• Photographer
  Glenna Gordon, United States
• Studio
  freelance photographer

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.

• Awards
  2013 Flash Forward 12: Emerging Photographers, Winner Photo District News Annual: 2013 Winner for Personal Project 2012 African Artists Foundation, Residency in Lagos, Nigeria Critical Mass, Photo Lucida, Finalist International Photography Awards, Lucie Foundation, Honorable Mention 2011 FotoWeekDC, Second Place in Photojournalism and Social Documentary, Washington DC 2009 Pulitzer Center Grant for Crisis Reporting, Justice Renewed in Liberia 2006 Columbia University Nona Balakian Award for Master’s thesis on women in publishing Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow, Residency in Eureka Springs, Arkansas