The magazine of the photo-essay
November 2016 issue
by David Pace
“A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine. Fabulous!”
Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film & documentary maker
After driving five hours from Ouagadougou, the capital of the small West African country of Burkina Faso, one arrives at
the small village of Karaba.
A short distance from the dusty main road a cavernous pit appears beside a field of corn. The color is dazzling and the
regular tectonic forms suggest a vast subterranean architectural project. This is the Karaba quarry where men carve
bricks from solid stone using only short-handled iron picks. In the hot equatorial sun they excavate the material that will
become the basic building blocks for the homes and walls that structure the surrounding communities.
The landscape is constantly changing. Each year, new shapes emerge as old ones disappear. The only thing that
remains constant is the labor of the workers who toil in the ever-widening quarry.
Pace has been documenting the quarry since 2008 on his annual visits to Burkina Faso.
2009.
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2015.
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