Certain photographs are intimations about the flow of life. The figures in Aina Zo Raberanto’s photo are depicted in such a hurry they seem like blotches, as the flash of brightness in a dream. In Rafalia’s panoramic scene of a street in Madagascar, the movements are to such a degree even the shadows seem poised for encounters, similar to the sense of ghostliness in Abdul Hamid Kanu’s “Shadows and Dust,” where a figure appears undimmed by a cloud of smoke.

Characteristically, each photographer, while describing the build-up to picturing their respective streets, speaks of a chance operation. For Abifola Olorunlana, there was “a sudden change in the atmosphere of the crowd ahead,” which he realized was due to an oncoming train. When he grabbed his camera and took a shot, he almost missed the opportunity. That near-miss is echoed in Kanu’s experience: “This stranger was walking up to where I was coming from and I had just a few seconds to lift up my camera, press the shutter, and continue going about my walk.”

And Raberanto and Rafalia, who are both Malagasy photographers (and collaborated on Galerie à Ciel Ouvert, an Open Sky Gallery) are patient in their regard. “The scene was there, I just had to immortalize it by taking care of the framing,” notes Rafalia, who had been standing upstairs. For hours, in Raberanto’s telling, they had stayed in a bar taking pictures. Then, she went towards the rainy outdoors. “Suddenly I see this cylco-shoot that stops to drop a lady off,” she writes. Instinct is sharpened by readiness. It's a lesson in method every street photographer learns by heart.

From the multi-directional tricycles in the Malagasy nighttime scenes, we turn to the mid-afternoon onrush of traffic in Freetown and Lagos. The flow of encounters on these streets are unposed, with the people as oblivious to the camera as the photographer is ignorant of their destinations. Except where, as in Olorunlana's train photo, a man's glance spares neither distrust nor attention. ••••