Ceux que la route ignore

For nearly a year, Carl Kabila walked the same route almost every day between his home and the family ranch, located on the outskirts of Lubumbashi. During the first few months, he explored it with fresh eyes, as a simple, curious observer discovering a side of Lubumbashi he knew little about: one filled with heavy trucks, tanker trucks, mining equipment, and endless traffic jams. These steel behemoths moved slowly through the dust, transforming the landscape in their wake. While the trucks had become a common sight, life around them remained in constant flux—the people, their gestures, their activities, their hopes, their gatherings, their joys, and their anger.

To capture a record of these fleeting presences and of this vibrant Lubumbashi on the edge of the industrial highway, Carl Kabila began photographing them with his phone from a moving vehicle. Although his approach was initially primarily documentary, another question—from which Ceux que la route ignore emerged—arose as his work progressed: how can one truly take the time to observe people and the situations they embody?

Through a series of digital paintings, he wanted to revisit these scenes glimpsed too quickly, prolong their existence, and give visibility and dignity to what habit eventually erases. Drawing allows him to revisit scenes glimpsed for just a few seconds and recapture the emotion that drove him to photograph them. It’s not a matter of embellishing these people, but of revealing the dignity already present in their gestures, their attitudes, and the way they occupy space. The road had reduced them to a few seconds. Painting attempts to restore their duration.