A Slice Of Lagos, Sesu Tilley-Gyado (Nigeria)
A Slice Of Lagos' by Sesu Tilley-Gyado. ‘Rev Samuel Johnson (1846-1901) and wife, Lagos’, Repurposed daguerreotype still.
British-Nigerian multi-medium artist Sesu Tilley-Gyado's A Slice Of Lagos, which ran at London's Rook and Raven Gallery in September, explored Lagos in the 1800s through reconstructed archival photography and film. According to Tilley-Gyado, 19th century Lagos was a rich melting pot for four cultures: the Yoruba, the Brazilians-Cubans, the Creoles, and the British. "I wanted to tell the story of Lagos’ multicultural origins," she says. "Its melting pot 19th Century where Yoruba kings fought for the throne, British colonials came to stay and tens of thousands of Brazilians, Cubans, and Creoles (descendants of slaves) ‘returned’ to Lagos." The slice of 19th century Lagos that Tilley-Gyado chose to tell was a particularly colorful and modernized one. In a series of fifteen portraits of 19th century Lagosians, the team warped the original black and white archival photos into digitally restored and colorized images given a modern facelift on fictionalized TIME magazine covers.
More Photos: 19th Century Lagos Through A Digitally Restored Lens
