Samantha Appleton

Makoko Slum. Lagos, Nigeria

Samantha Appleton works primarily on long-term projects including recent work in the Middle East and illegal immigration in America. She has won numerous awards from POY and the World Press Photo. Her clients include Time magazine and The New Yorker. Samantha has worked on stories as varied as the conflict in Iraq, Malaria in Africa and fishing communities of Maine. She began her journalism career as a writer and became a full time photographer after assisting James Nachtwey in 1999-2000. Since then she has been named one of the “30 Under 30” photographers featured in PDN and received the Kodak Professional Award. She is currently a member of the NOOR photo agency.

About the Photograph:

“The Megacity of Lagos, Nigeria is a teeming cluster of slums that continues to grow exponentially and will soon become the third largest city in the world. Lagos is urban poverty at its most horrific, in a country with one of the world’s largest oil supplies. People have built up their own towns and social systems in the wake of complete governmental abandonment. Nigeria does not provide the most basic of services.  Indentured slavery is standard, health care is non-existent, and corruption is the only system.”