Over the course of five decades, Marilyn Nance has produced images of unique moments in the cultural history of the United States and the African Diaspora. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Nance is a two-time finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Award in Humanistic Photography. Her work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Library of Congress, and has been published in The World History of Photography, History of Women in Photography and The Black Photographers Annual.
From 15 January to 12 February, 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. While serving as the photographer for the US contingent of the North American delegation, 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.
