Art: Touba Rising (With Scaffolding): A Love Song to the Divine, Under Construction

Here we are, standing in the courtyard of eternity—or at least in front of the Great Mosque of Touba, which, depending on your level of spiritual maturity or travel budget, may be close enough. Captured by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn—a photographer who doesn’t just document Black life but writes visual psalms in light and shadow—we’re given a front-row seat to faith, form, and five o’clock scaffolding.

Barrayn, a Brooklyn-bred daughter of Senegalese and African-American diasporas, doesn’t deal in your tourist-trap National Geographic exotica. She shoots with the soul of an archivist, the eye of an artist, and the subtle defiance of someone who knows that the real story is rarely told in English—or with a straight face.

So what’s in this image?

A mosque the size of a cosmic epiphany. Domes like upside-down bowls of celestial couscous. Minarets rising like fingers pointing Godward—or middle fingers to colonial arrogance. This is the heart of the Mouride brotherhood in Senegal, founded by Cheikh Amadou Bamba, a man the French tried to exile, silence, and erase. (Spoiler: they failed. Miserably.)

Look closer. This isn’t some hushed, empty monument to belief—it’s alive. A woman balances her burden with elegance the Met Gala couldn’t fake. A man in white robes leans over a child with a tenderness that could make even Instagram’s algorithm feel something. Meanwhile, the mosque looms, half-wrapped in construction netting like a holy mummy about to wake up and ask what century we’re in.

Barrayn has shot Harlem, Senegal, New Orleans—places where Blackness doesn’t beg for inclusion, it is the standard. She’s one of the founding voices of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, which is less a photo book than a visual manifesto wrapped in a hard cover.

And here’s the kicker—amid this grandeur and gravitas, the mosque is under renovation. Yes, divinity is being power-washed. Sanctity is wearing scaffolding. Which begs the question:

What if even the holiest places are always a work in progress—and we are, too?

Are you scaffolding your soul, or still hoping someone else will build it for you?

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