Paper short abstract:

This paper explores photography, its materiality and enduring efficacy activated in various modalities. Photography emerges as an active component of performing citizenship in Nigeria at the meso-level of community and the supra level of faith-based personhood, mitigating 'impaired citizenship'.

Paper long abstract:

In Nigeria, the services of professional photographers are required for any key life stage event or celebration. Even the humblest person on limited means feels the need to avail themselves of the services of professional photographers or to purchase a photograph commemorating an event that they attend. This paper explores this phenomenon to suggest that this goes beyond memorialisation or conspicuous spending, as photographs very materiality and the processes of production, audience reception, circulation are testimony to their enduring efficacy in various modalities. In a country where the struggle for a viable citizenship compact continues, the levels where everyday people claim rights and perform responsibilities are often the meso-level of community and the supra-level of faith-based personhood. These two poles are stratified by different cleavages of ethnicity, indigeneity, political affiliation, temporality and faith within an enduring indigenous cosmology. The paper explores how in various ways and at different points in their 'image-lives' photographs enact and are mobilised to mitigate 'impaired citizenship' (Azoulay) and facilitate agency and aspirations. This paper draws on recent ethnographic fieldwork in Nigeria (Ila Orangun, Ilé-Ifè and Lagos) to trace these intersections of performing citizenship, claiming rights and activating power and allegiance in contemporary Nigeria.