ABSTRACT
A woman sits beyond a plywood table, upon which lean small plastic bags of water such as are sold for a few centimes on the street in Bamako. In each bag is a photograph. The bags are laid in a row, leaning on one another, so that only the first in line can be clearly seen. The photograph glimpsed in this bag, soon to disintegrate, shows a girl, dressed in green and silver. She is the same as the one who sits beyond
the table, but time has done its trick, as it will soon do to the whole scene just described. The woman was a girl, she is now the wife of the photographer; still young, but not as young, never to be as young again, as this artwork – this photograph-of-a-photograph – reminds us. The woman looks away and contemplates her future, or perhaps her past. Her doubled presence reinforces relationships to her past self, to the artist and to the viewer.
