The visual extremes - sentimental touristy postcards at one end, raw photojournalism at the other - are a form of artistic colonialism, an exploitation of African life to fit Northern or Western preconceptions; they - these persistent stereotypes of Africa - distract us from the fact that Africa, the continent, is above all else a place inhabited by ordinary people leading ordinary lives. These are images of ordinary African days, taken in very ordinary ways, without artifice, without manipulation or staging, without exchanges of money or goods. They represent an honest, though by no means complete, rendering of moments in the flow of everyday African life.