Africa Is a Country

Not just some passing foreign journalist

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Not just some passing foreign journalist

By
Elnathan John

Lawyer and writer Elnathan John interviewed U.S. photographer Glenna Gordon. Listen.

A wedding photographer snaps a northern bride with her husband and brother at a ceremony in Kano, Nigeria (Glenna Gordon).

Glenna Gordon is a freelance photographer based in Brooklyn. She takes evocative pictures of everyday life in Nigeria, showing a special interest in Northern Nigeria. In this interview, Glenna opens up on misconceptions of the north, what drives her as a photographer and storyteller, the ways in which she captures intimate moments and her most recent project: photographing belongings from the abducted Chibok school girls.  She shows, in her words and in her work how invested she is in the lives of her subjects- not just some passing foreign journalist looking for a third world photo. Elnathan speaks to her in Abuja. Here.

Image from Glenna Gordon’s “Nigeria Ever After” Series.

Further Reading

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.