Money must be made – Lorenzo Vitturi

The many streets that host the Balogun market sprawl from the shadow of a twenty-seven-storey building called the Financial Trust House. For a long time this building was the tallest on the island, housing western corporations and banks in its heyday. These days it remains, but it’s unoccupied now. The crowd at the market swelled and multiplied by sheer osmosis over the years, and swallowed the area into its throngs. Real estate developers say the House will remain unoccupied for as long as the market is unregulated. Here we find the paradox that so interested Vitturi – where his previous publication Dalston Anatomy surveyed gentrification killing off local business in London, in Lagos he found quite the opposite: gentrification in reverse. Money Must Be Made is a hardcover publication, each cover is handmade and unique, collaged by Vitturi with recycled off-cuts of various fabrics, vinyl’s and leather. The Nigerian writer Emmanuel Iduma has written an accompanying glossary as a way to navigate through the book and it’s many voices, based on his experiences growing up in Lagos.