I’m interested in contemporary urban Africa and the lives people live in today’s African cities. As a photographer, I want to know what we can learn by looking at the urban environment, in particular, by examining actual built structures. What stories can walls and buildings tell us about the people who live there, their histories, their aspirations? And what secrets do the walls hold - or perhaps reveal if we pay close attention?
In my series of close-ups of walls I explore the elements of human intention: how the walls are built and how they are decorated. I find creativity, practicality, and a love of beauty. I also examine the impact the city itself has on the built environment: what are the effects of time and the tropical climate on the visual surroundings of everyday life? Sometimes the results include great beauty.
I am equally interested in walls as evidence and symbols of power. Who built them, and for what purpose? Who decides, and how do they decide? So, when one group of people decides to capture, buy, sell, and transport living human cargo, what sort of structure do they build, and where? And today, generations later, how are the walls that contained those unimaginable horrors to be understood? Or, when a modern leader decides to create a sparkling new neighborhood of glass-encased skyscrapers, what happens to the people who live and work in the structures slated for destruction? Can they resist, or can they only salvage the remains?
