sensations (saint-louis, senegal) delphine diallo. images | text
+ all images copyright 2007, delphine diallo
To imagine that a part of our personal and cultural African history was made the object of false interpretations over hundreds of years. To imagine that this history, fully integrated into our identity, influences the present. To imagine, finally, that our knowledge of events contradicts official history. These complex realities informed my work in order to understand the same essence of that which for me represents my African identity.
Being of mixed Senegalese and French origin, my status as a human being generates diverse questions: Shouldn’t one know his origins to be able to identify oneself?
Beyond my concerns of an artistic nature, I discovered another culture apart from my family. I experienced a true awakening on what today should define us as human beings: family, sharing, love and tolerance.
Saint-Louis, once known as “N’da,” means large terra cotta vase. Here, this term takes the sense of the reservoir. The Wolof name of Saint-Louis comes from this word. I was thus at the source of my origins.
Saint-Louis is a melting pot where a mixed culture formed itself, in rupture with the old ways. The intensity and the quality of the mixing of ideas, of races and of cultures made Saint-Louis what it is and gave birth to this type of human that is the Saint-Louisian, the “dommo ndar.” He is a mixture, often on the ethnological level, but always on the psychological level.
Delphine Diallo is a graphic designer, illustrator, painter and, obiviously, a photgrapher. A Parisian turned New Yorker, Delphine still carries her scion of the world stamp proudly. For more of Delphine's work and Delphine's story please go to..
Even though the Oulof people are more numerous in this region, many bear Bambara, Toucouleur, French, English, and Portuguese names. Some are Catholic, others Muslim.
