"In the desert, as on shipboard, one is sensible of the passage of time. In that parching heat a man feels that the day is a voyage towards the goal of evening, towards the promise of a cool breeze that will bathe the limbs and wash away the sweat. Under the heat of the day beasts and men plod towards the sweet well of night as confidently as towards death. Thus, idleness here is never vain: and each day seems as comforting as the roads that lead to the sea. " Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
In the thick heat of the desert and on the edge of the city, Men orchestrate their day with the rhythm of the sun. The shadows that draw the city of Agadez create a solar geometry. I wanted to capture the poetry of everyday life, the sweetness of life, the complex identity and duality of a contrasting Niger. The sun gives rhythm to life. The city's slowness and its cold nights. The aridity and solitude of the Sahara, which yet men once inhabited a long time ago. Between modernity and tradition, the dissonant city is made up of astonishing architecture, made of banco, concrete and bricks. Huge mansions multiply at the edge of the city, while the old town is being gently renovated. In the dust and sand, the men wait, in the shade of a metal sheet, for the coolness of the evening. At the entrance of the desert, the immensity of the landscape crushes the man. The power of the earth and the heat of the ground that burns your feet. When the sun is at its zenith, I watched my uncle get out of the vehicle and look for the road between the dunes, in this flat landscape where danger is no longer visible to the naked eye. It is at dusk, when the sun shaves the dunes, that the perspective of these sandy mountains finally allows us to identify the relief. With his turbaned face, in the middle of nothing, in these spaces where surely no man has crossed our path, a Tuareg is preparing tea. I wanted to explore this so particular temporality, linked to the sun.
