Every day, people from a nearby village cross the lake by pirogue. The journey last around fifthteen minutes, yet time seems to suspend itself on the water.
Humans, baskets of food, motorbikes, animals: Bodies and belongings gather inside the vessel, carried between one shore to another. Alongside them travel also emotions and other things. Fear, worry, prayers, anticipation, silence.
The crossing is both ordinary and uncertain. the water is relied upon without ever being trusted. Beneath conversations and routine gestures lives the possibility of disppearance, the fear of being swallowed by the lake before reaching the riverbank. And yet, there is no other way accross.
What emerges withing this repeated movement is a form of surrender: to the pirogue, to the driver, to the collective rhythm of crossing itself.
Developed through returning, shared time, proximity, silence, worries and conversations, the eries attends not only to movement and crossing, but to the emotional and relational worlds carried within it.
Inhabiting Movement — 2026 — Benin
film photography
rhythm — suspended time — collective vulnerability — emotional atmosphere of crossing — proximity — shared time — crossing as lived condition — water — trust — emotional uncertainty — instability