The Beautiful Time

This suite of images by the Congolese photographer and video artist Sammy Baloji explores colonial architecture and copper mines in the city of Lubumbashi and the southeastern Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. For Baloji and others of his generation, who were born after the country’s independence in 1960, the colonial period was a time when hard work transformed a sparsely inhabited area into a modern city. In contrast, Baloji’s images portray an industrial environment haunted by the physical absence of humanity: no one is inside the buildings, machines are rusting and idle, and train tracks sit without trains. Like many people in the Congo today, Baloji aims to understand and reconnect two strikingly different eras.