I write photographs so that I won’t forget. Things press in on me, things howl – I remember the war of 1998. And even today gunfire is still heard in Africa, houses still burn, and men fall beneath grey skies on the hillsides of Slaughterhouse Mountain. It is a long, torturous road. A shell goes by, messing up the leg of some smartly dressed guy freshly arrived from France.
He crumbles among the crowd, moaning, hand holding a foot wearing a John Love shoe, hanging by bloody flesh. Then he plunges into the waters. There are other people who will never return to these neighbourhoods, that’s for sure. I decided to pose here, as a reminder.
Exposition Panafricaine
Musée National du Mali
Armel Louzala (Republic of the Congo)
Photographies écrites, 2011