A Harvest of Sand

Photographer

Philipp Schmieja

Category

Editorial Photography - Documentary

Company

Submission Group

Amateur

Year

2026

Country / Region:

Germany

The Bozo have always taken what the Niger offered. In Mopti it was fish, until drought and a shrinking river ended that and the families moved south to Bamako. At Kalaban Coro the harvest is sand: hauled up from the bed in buckets, piled on the shore, waiting for the trucks that will turn it into walls. A girl works the waterline with a baby asleep on her back, selling the ground beneath the river to a city that cannot be built fast enough.