Seeing African Cities in Transition

Africa is the most rapidly urbanizing continent on the planet: The UN projects that the share of Africans living in cities will triple between 2020 and 2050. That dizzying pace of change has turned its cities into transitional spaces, where the old and the new and the private and the public are in constant flux. The only permanent fixture is the process of making room.

A new exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art showcases three photographers who’ve made the transformation of African cities the central theme in their work. “They compel us to think about African cities in intriguing ways, juxtaposing one period of time against another, documenting daily life in the context of sprawling growth and often with an acute awareness of potential loss or threat,” Peter Barberie, the Brodsky Curator of Photographs at the museum, said in a statement.