JOURNAL — 04 APRIL 2026

WHAT LAGOS LOOKS LIKE BEFORE SUNRISE

The city has a version of itself that most people never see — quieter, slower, and entirely its own.

Most of my documentary work happens before six in the morning, which means most people who see the finished photographs have never stood where I was standing. Lagos before sunrise is a different city — the traffic hasn't started, the markets are still being built rather than run, and the light moves in long, low bands instead of the flat glare of midday.

I started shooting this hour almost by accident, arriving early for a commercial job and finding the empty streets more interesting than the brief. Since then it's become its own ongoing project — a study of the twenty or so minutes before Lagos officially wakes up.

The people in these photographs are usually the first ones out — traders setting up, a lone jogger, a security guard finishing a night shift. They move differently than the daytime version of the same streets. There's less performance in it, because there's no one around yet to perform for.

I keep coming back because the light never repeats itself exactly, and because I suspect this version of the city says something true about it that the loud, crowded version doesn't get to.