The passersby are cast against cropped backdrops: a trio of buses and canopies arranged like enfilades in Amanda Iheme’s “Casa De Fernandez House,” similar to the vehicles in Jean-fidèle’s “Owo Da?”; also, the buildings behind the walkers in photographs by Edem J. Tamakloe and Ọlájídé Ayẹni.

Hence, if the combined narrative relays the hurry of encounter—“the fluid movement of people pacing up and down the length of the church yard,” as Tamakloe writes—it is equally a pointer to conditions on the street, a drama or piece of history that readies the scene.

“I had observed the agbero—as they are popularly known in Lagos—having a disagreement with the bus conductors and one thing led to another and they were at each other's throats,” notes Jean-fidèle. In that photo, the lack of agitation in the manner of the onlookers, such as the man who holds up a phone, is telling. The drama is casual in its immediacy, soon to pass.

What isn’t casual is the sense of historic value of the building in Iheme’s photograph. Her statement on it is sentimental and declarative: “The building is dead. It was demolished in 2016 by the Lagos State Government. It had lasted for more than 200 years when it died.” The photograph, then, is a kind of false positive, trembling with a life that is now past, relic of a relic.

And yet a street photograph is special for the bustle and flux it records. Ayẹni’s photograph of a changed street reveals, he says, “how time can alter our understanding of familiarity with a place.” When time is a blind instructor, photography can become an efficient docent. ••••