Nairobi Noir - a street photography project

September 17, 2014 7:15 AM

Nairobi Noir is a beautiful collection of photographs taken at night on the streets of Nairobi. Sometimes chilling, sometimes grim, always evocative
posted by darsh (6 comments total)

It's interesting how these look pretty much like any other city at night. I'm so conditioned to expect some exotic, outsider view of Africa in photosets like this. You know; dusty villages with barefoot kids, smiling women with colorful headscarves, determined men working at manual labor. It's a good correction for me to see, well, rainy streetscapes that could be almost any city.

I like this photo the best of the ones I looked at closely. The composition and subject mostly, but also that's a hell of a bit of exposure control.

The archive view is good if you want thumbnails.
posted by Nelson at 8:11 AM on September 17, 2014

It's interesting how these look pretty much like any other city at night. I'm so conditioned to expect some exotic, outsider view of Africa in photosets like this.

I wonder if that has more to do with the photo style versus the universality of city night life.
posted by Fizz at 8:26 AM on September 17, 2014

Love these. This is the best of metafilter, and why I love this site. Thank you so much, darsh!
posted by VikingSword at 10:36 AM on September 17, 2014

This is awesome.
posted by klangklangston at 11:19 AM on September 17, 2014

No close-ups as such... there's a sense that the photographer is keeping their distance, taking the photos from a car, perhaps. To me this only added to the sense of unease.
posted by misterbee at 4:53 PM on September 17, 2014

If the photographer is taking the photos from a car, that car is very strangely parked in some of these. I just get the impression that the author is not aiming to do portraits of people. That distance is very common in cityscape photography.

As for the style of the photos "inventing" the universality -- well, Nairobi is a large, modern city. There are some things that are different, but paved streets, rain, tall buildings, and people in western clothes are all things that actually exist there. The "exotic" Africa still exists, often outside of city centers, but these more familiar (to us) things exist too.

I think that's what's so striking about these photos, besides their skill, is that they don't have the anthropological gaze that is so common in photos of Africa for western audiences. These could easily be art photos of New York, or Tokyo, or Paris, if not for some of the details.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:52 PM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]