The railway line between Dakar and Saint-Louis in Senegal was built between 1883 and 1885, it measures 265 kilometers. Its construction responded to the desire to develop trade between these two cities. It has enabled the peanut trade to flourish as well as the transport of passengers. Every ten, fifteen kilometers were built stations with original and aerial architecture where brick, iron and wood blend harmoniously. A railway city with a vocation for maintenance rolling stock has been installed in Thiès. The railway crosses semi-desert, peri-urban areas and villages. This birth also marked a change in policy: from a simple Senegal's trading post became a French colony. I discovered this railway line when I did scouting for my Vestiges project of empire (Ed. de la Martinière, 2016). I then approached the line as a heritage element in general, but I was spellbound by the landscapes bordering the rails, by the remains of stations and by the inhabitants who have occupied the premises. I left Senegal feeling that I had discovered unsuspected universes and the certainty that I had to come back to photograph these places before their disappearances. Indeed, having only photographed a few stations, I had glimpsed that a life was at the work along the tracks and in the stations invested by craftsmen, shepherds, traders and even artists. This fragile world is doomed to disappear for lack of maintenance, by the inexorable advancement of modernity and environmental issues. While my photographic entry point has always been more oriented towards architecture, I have discovered a complementarity between man and his habitat which I now wish to explore. Never had I felt such an echo between people and a place. The desire to witness For my project, I chose to remain faithful to the temporality of the first steam trains and to travel the line on foot with an assistant (small technical “jumps” will be made in transport). To discover the line while walking is to take the time, to allow meeting, discussion and listening the other. I will be able to photograph these women and men who live around and on the line: shepherds, nomads, residents, simple travelers. Understand who they are and how they live. But also to document the architectures that fit into this desert setting made of dunes, bush and silence. Choosing to use a camera is choosing a device that is dear to me and which imposes its own rhythm. For me, using color films responds to the need to anchor this subject in reality. In my opinion, the beauty of things and objects weathered by time are revealed in color. These architectures mingled with these faces never left me. So I returned to Senegal at the start of 2019. This line, which was active for about a hundred years, has shaped the environment and people. She was so important that cities were created around train stations and that it is still perceived today like the old umbilical cord of Senegal. The intimate connection between the human and the built tells us a story in motion. A story never told and unknown outside Senegal. For me, it is about reproducing the grandeur of the landscapes and the beauty of men.