SGPIA faculty Glenna Gordon’s intimate and compelling images of women romance novelists from Northern Nigeria are now compiled in a photobook titled Diagram of the Heart. 

Source: Time Lightbox
Source: Time Lightbox

The photobook, made available for purchase yesterday, adds an important new narrative to the mainstream media’s story of women in Northern Nigeria—a region that has been heavily impacted by the violence of terrorist group Boko Haram.

A recent Time article on Gordon’s work remarked, “This is the behind-the-scenes look, if you will, on romance schlock in the most unexpected of places. Schmaltzy tales might be the last thing American and Western audiences expect to emerge from the Sahel, but that’s precisely the point.”

The book was intentionally designed to mimic the romance paperback novels that are the subject of Gordon’s work. It is small enough to fit into a coat pocket and all copies were made in Nigeria.

Gordon teaches a summer course at SGPIA titled “Reading Contemporary Photography of the Developing World.” Learn more about her work at glennagordon.com