Street View
Last minute shopping before dark The golden hour is in the purple blue phase Tropical night will suddenly drop like a curtain Birds will go silent as the frogs pick-up the music The unnerving hum of hungry mosquito hordes Photo Hugh Ardoin Niamey Dusk and Dust Gallery
Away from the Western selfish materialist societies Where confinement is made possible by individualism Where a two persons gathering becomes a legal limit And lockup has a meaning only because of the locks Exceptionalism is the disease, fortunately less contagious Self-isolation is just an acute form of Narcissism This ignorance may save the ‘invisible’ part […]
Camels, taxis and oranges, here is the capital’s life Light traffic at no peak on the Niamey avenues The sand is everywhere on the road in your hair and in your eyes Even the famous spicy roadside grilled chicken has some grit Photo Hugh Ardoin The Niamey Streets Gallery
Niamey, some ten years ago, it could be twenty Time passes at the speed of centuries day by day Following the rhythm of the desert’s tides From sandstorms to rainy season and back again The crops are the clock of life Photo Hugh Ardoin The Niamey Streets Gallery
Outside, looking out as we drive by Safekeeping fortunes he will never behold An old man in a ragged uniform stands guard A container like a red wall, keeping worlds apart Heavily pregnant of its abstract load of value More than meets the eye, but forever unseen Photo Hugh Ardoin Africa by any Means Necessary […]
The old Accra is famous for its boxing schools The choice of the name is another matter Reminds me of “Discipline and Punish” by Michel Foucault A famous philosophical work about education, society and its prisons It matters what we learn, but it matters even more how we think… Photo Hugh Ardoin Africa by any […]
Every man is king in his own castle Happiness is not an incontrovertible rule We find sunshine in our own sunny spots Ghana was once called the gold coast A name that betrayed the purpose of the colons Before then, it was a powerful empire in its own name Photo Hugh Ardoin Africa by Any […]
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
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 […]