2023 Siena Creative Photo Awards, Fine Art: Experimental, Shortlist
2023 Royal Photographic Society International Exhibition (IPE) 164 Selected
These magic lantern slides of West Nigeria came to me by chance. The slides include portraits of British missionaries who probably projected the slides in lectures for religious education, to support the colonial project and illustrate Christian involvement in cocoa-growing and other industries.
I approach the slide collection as a site for critical enquiry. Before the aggression of colonialism and its imposed notions of science and religion, every tribe and region in Nigeria had distinct and complex animistic religious traditions and beliefs. In animism, all material phenomena have agency. Using experimental techniques combining analogue with digital, I set out to investigate the passive agency of the ‘magic’ slides by making visible a hidden materiality.
