Kenya Drive-Through
All of these pictures were taken from the back seat of a car in December 2006 while being driven from Mosocho, a little village on the west of Kenya, to Nairobi, where I was to take my flight back to Europe. We were in a rush to get to Nairobi before sunset, when the streets would get too dangerous, and the world “bumpy” is inadequate to describe the road condition, which was so extreme, that driving next to the road was often the better choice. I was not expecting any of these pictures to turn out as being readable. But I was wrong – thanks to the valent vibration-reduction filter of my little Nikon point&shoot.
This was then the last of three chapters of images (arriving / staying / departing) that I did in Kenya shortly before Christmas 2006. And of all of these it was this last set of images that most excited me. I remember sitting in the plane reviewing the pictures on the monitor and starting to get a strange feeling in my stomach …
A different selection of images was chosen for a little book that came out in color. You can check it out here.
I was not thinking “documentary” back then, thus I have several versions of these images. The original series, of course, which I have archived, but also variations of it in b&w – like the series you see here.
While I mostly only corrected the contrast, I dodged the partially cloudy sky out of some of the images, achieving a more graphical result. I like both results for different reasons and keep them as alternatives.
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