Urban Cadence: Street Scenes from Lagos and Johannesburg

Carol L. Magee, curator and lead editor
Natalie Marsh, co-editor
Caroline Culbert, co-editor
Published by Gund Gallery, Kenyon College, 2019
221 pages

Urban Cadence: Street Scenes from Lagos and Johannesburg tells the multifaceted stories of two urban environments-Lagos, Nigeria and Johannesburg, South Africa-experienced through the artistic expressions of photography and video. African cities are the fastest growing in the world, and these two cities have experienced this growth in diverse yet fascinating ways: the first as a mega-city, the latter as a center of industrial development. The street scenes in this exhibition catalog represent the complex narratives of these urban areas: tales of migration, labor, desperation, success, hope, and imagination among others. Here, these stories are woven together with the theme of cadence, which speaks to the rhythms of life. Cadence is the gait of the artist or inhabitants of the city as they move through urban spaces. Cadence is a visual rhythm an artist creates when telling the city's myriad stories. At the same time, it is a musical metaphor that artists draw on to speak about their images or their photographic practice. Whether sobering, humorous, or unexpected, the visuals of Urban Cadence challenge us to explore what it means to be urban in Africa in the early 21st century. The exhibition was originally shown at the Gund Gallery from October 17, 2018 to March 4, 2019 and was curated by Carol Magee, PhD, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History, UNC-Chapel Hill.