Over forty percent of Africa’s population lives in one of the continent’s metropolitan regions. Everyday life on the streets of these cities that never sleep is the central theme of Lard Buurman’s Africa Junctions, a series of photographs produced over a six year period in twelve African countries and fifteen cities. In Alexandria, Cairo, Cape Town, Casablanca, Dakar, Dar es Salaam, Douala, Johannesburg, Kampala, Kinshasa, Lagos, Luanda, Lubumbashi, Lusaka, and Nairobi, Buurman’s camera captured the way people go about their private, public, social, and business lives on streets and in public spaces. These are places where sidewalks literally turn into rows of open-air stores, along with hairdressing salons, copy shops, auto repair shops, and laundries.
The photos in the series look like snapshots of an urban setting, but appearances are…
