Dusk and Dust
The whitest ceramics in the heart of sub-Saharan Africa Shiny chalices cupped to gather the rarest water of the desert The miracle is almost there, lost somewhere amongst mirages Meanwhile vendors relax in the shade waiting for the the rain or the customer Whichever will come first.. Hugh Ardoin The Niamey Streets Gallery
Tasked with the daunting mission to haul the desert away An ageing green truck waits for cooler times to start its work Idle men on top watch the shovels intently, but they refuse to move on their own Victory is earned in blood sweat and tears regardless of the help of divine winds While men […]
Travelling at the speed of light along the dusty roads Entering Niamey through the magical gates of dusk When dust mixes with the mist of a past torrid day The sky still shows patches of light blue and fiery clouds Neon lights slowly wake their flickering heads To stand up and fight the incoming darkness […]
Crossing the bridge over the river and the rice paddies Racing against the twilight’s extinction man beats donkey And the first will one day be the last in the orders of disorder Night will come to him with swarms of giant bats like flying demons The incubus will come under the guise of night, a […]
A Desert Princess, the daughter of some powerful Pharaoh Riding her blue steel steed straight at the incoming villains Stopping in disbelief at the very edge of disaster Wondering how can her right of way be wrong Beautiful in her purple and gold robe, crowned by a shiny red helmet Photo Hugh Ardoin Niamey Dusk […]
Like moths racing against the coming night A helmeted couple ride their moped into the sunset The clouds turn indigo and pink before the blackout The planet is red and ocher with some occasional green spots The colors of the couple’s outfits perfectly match the scene Photo Hugh Ardoin Niamey Dusk and Dust Gallery
As the day grows eager to leave, so does this woman waiting for a cab Niamey communal taxis are five-seat minibuses following whimsical routes Living-dead contraptions escaped from a scrapyard driven on a licence from Hell For a penny or less you get the once in a lifetime experience of the African Luna Park rides […]
From the far edge of reality starts another reality We sit watching sunset and replay our sugar-coated dreams Along Sunset Boulevards in some faraway place Pink stars lie on the floor calling strange names In the desert the stars still hang from the sky above in their own name And the magic moment of eerie […]
In Susan Sontag’s world of words and images Photographs are the past of present and more specifically “Found objects and unpremeditated slices of life” Now that the sun has set over Niamey is already past But it is a surreal future for the viewers to come Beauty is the object as well as the essence […]
As the end of the day grows near, a young lady walks by proudly ignoring the butcher Until someone gets hungry the butchers are generally shunned This comes from an old West African tradition, before the Egyptian dynasties Where Butchers, blacksmiths and minstrels altogether Form part of a special “lower caste” of free people Photo […]