Color photograph of a man riding a bike away from the viewer

Untitled (44UN-7960-596), Sudan, 1958

Todd Webb

Archival pigment print

Courtesy of the Todd Webb Archive L2020.85.34

Not on View

The long shadows cast here suggest that Webb photographed this man riding his bicycle on a main street in Kassala, which Webb described as “a center for the desert nomadic tribes of Sudan and surrounding countries,” in the early morning or late afternoon. This image presents a sense of the bright sunshine and environment in this arid setting, where the average high in May, when Webb was visiting, was 106 degrees (over 41° Celsius). Especially in the context of a nomadic, camel-utilizing society, bikes may have represented a more localized construct of “modernity” than the one imposed from outside.

Image: In Copyright. Courtesy of the Todd Webb Archive

Urbanization

Return to Urbanization