Street View
Quietly hurrying home before the nightfall A mother and three young girls walk along the newly paved avenues Public lighting still belongs to a remote future, more or less sci-fi The sunset lends soft colors like a balm after the scorching daylight Soon vast bat swarms will fill the sky, and suddenly everything will go […]
At the gentlemen’s club by the grocery stall Idle talk and banter for the end of day socializing Life goes idle at dusk, just before the night-shift Darkness will settle over the city like a blanket on a parrot’s cage Nighthawks and fireflies will come out from the shadow circle To assemble and flutter around […]
Time seems to slow for the dusk hours It is the reprieve from the hot day past until the next People take time off the time to chat and play Tropical night come suddenly, shrouding the city Photo Hugh Ardoin Niamey Dusk and Dust Gallery Hits: 14
Paper money and iron towers cast their foreboding shadows on the city At the very feet of the giants, people work and slave for the money-masters After a long day’s work they wait for the bus back to the boxes they call home Kept out of sight, below the shiny windows that only reflect the […]
Cool cars and cool ice creams just one character away The Italian touch came to Lima with its love for ice-creams A bakery sits like a shady cave in the sun-burnt streets Quiet days in the Americas a between the Andes and the Pacific Photo Hugh Ardoin The Americas Gallery Hits: 9
Sheltering from a hesitant yet burning sun Three men chat the day away waiting for customers Bald tires that will start but never finish their last journey Derelict freezers, the expectation of a never coming ice age The world is full of dreams that roam the desert’s empty plains As words fly high on the […]
The broken perspective lines of a picture snapped from a car The broken pottery waiting for tomorrow’s future archaeologists Three generations squeezed in space in a chiaroscuro of shade and light The conflicting patterns of the dresses and the banknote-looking calico Time has no clocks, it is always on the run, leaving everything behind Photo […]
Goro City waiting for the sandstorm on a dusty Harmattan day The children play in the street, there is always an elder watching The locked shops and the polystyrene jetsam are the setting of their games And the digital dreams are painted on the walls like some pyramid’s mystery Photo Hugh Ardoin The Niamey Streets […]
Orange traders meet for tea under a makeshift pergola Katako is Niamey’s stock market, the place where everything is traded Today, it is a large delivery of oranges that came “all the way from China” Like the words of Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” that still ring in my head The rusting corrugated iron sheds lend an artsy […]
The sign with the name of the street reads Boulevard de la Jeunesse Seen from here, the boulevard of youth looks so short With hindsight we would rather bide our time slowly Who needs a moped or a motor car to speed the time It works at its irreversible pace, there is no hurry Only […]