GLENDORA BOOKS SUPPLEMENT • ISSUE NUMBER TWO •  1997

Southern
Images

THE  works  that  make
up  the collection  of im-
ages  by  the  Scottish
photographer,  Owen
Logan, titled A Home of
Signs  and Wonders be-
gan  a 
three-month
showing  in three  Nige-
rian  cities  -  Kaduna
(January),  Calabar
(February)  and  Lagos
(March) 1998.

The  current  exhibi-
tion  is following  up on
an 
earlier  one  in
Edinburgh.  Scotland
which  opened  on 6th
March  1997 at the Scot-
tish  National  Portrait
Gallery and lasted three
months.

The materials  form-
ing the exhibition  were
gathered in the course of
Logan's  three  year
journ in Southern Ni
ria  which  began in
city  of Calabar wh
his wife was conducting
a  doctoral  research on
the  legacies  of Scottish
missionaries in Nigeria.
The  spiritual  theme
of  the  photographic
work  was therefore  al-
most  inescapable  but
the  spirituality  also
overlaps  with  Nigeria's
politics  and  oil-driven
economy.  The exhibi-
tion  proves  (as con-
firmed  to Dapo Adeniyi
in an interview with the
photographer  recorded
at the site of the first ex-
hibition  in  Edinburgh)
that  the various  angles
from which Logan's  1P"Q
observed  the Niger]
society  helped  to re
force a theory about 1
mutations of power ana
the  nature  of social re-
lationships.

The  exhibition  in
Kaduna held at the Mu-
seum, in Calabar at the
Old  Residency  and in
Lagos  at the  National
museum,  Onikan.

Exhibition 

cata-
logue, 28 pp, 1997, pub-
lished  by The  British
Council, 10 Spring Gar-
dens,  London. SW1,
2BN.

Oil Coast, Rivers State  1996; Owen Logan.