Third Mainland Bridge — Lagos Dawn
35,273.45 ¥
The Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos photographed at dawn from a boat on Lagos Lagoon — Africa’s longest bridge crossing 11.8 kilometres across the lagoon, the morning commuter traffic beginning to build, the Lagos skyline beyond.
Description
The Third Mainland Bridge — completed 1990, at 11.8 kilometres the longest bridge in Africa — connects the Lagos mainland to Lagos Island across the Lagos Lagoon, carrying up to 250,000 vehicles daily over its six lanes. The bridge is one of Lagos’s defining infrastructure elements and the primary route for millions of commuters between the mainland residential districts and the island business centres. At dawn — when the morning commuter build-up is just beginning and the lagoon surface is still relatively calm — the bridge takes on a photographic quality that its midday gridlock never reveals. This photograph was made from a lagoon boat positioned 200 metres south of the bridge at 5:45am — the angle that captures the bridge’s length in perspective from one shore to the other while the Lagos Island skyline rises in the background. The dawn sky reflected in the lagoon creates a dramatic doubling of the colour. The bridge’s concrete piers at regular intervals across the water frame the composition in a rhythmic pattern.
