This volume is the catalogue of an exhibition held at Palazzo Strozzi, Forence from 5 March to 3 July 2005. The exhibition brought together fifty masterpieces dating back to the most ancient kingdoms of Nigeria, gathered from various museums around the country, and offered the public the perspective of a “classical” alternative to the “primitive” Africa which had been discovered and exalted as an important reference point for 20th-century European art and culture. I photographed all the artefacts that were to be displayed at the exhibition in an ad hoc photographic set, which I organized in the Lagos Museum. Given the complex political situation in Nigeria our team was housed in a compound reserved for western guests, surrounded by turrets and protected by armed guards. We also had an armed guard for our transfer from the compound to the museum. We managed, anyway, to complete our mission successfully
