Untitled, 2025

“As I’m working, my camera itself has also transitioned from being simply the medium that I’m working through, into an independent actor in its own right. There’s a large sentiment within the photographic community of taking your camera with you absolutely everywhere. Catherine Opie recounts how a mentor had her photograph 5 full rolls of film every single single day for over a year. To move with a camera in that way, requires a certain entitlement to the space around you, some sense of belonging. I started my project from this mentality, carrying my camera around with me, in order to process the buildings and landscapes that I encountered. However, soon into the project, my camera and I had two confrontations with Ghanaian locals, which made me rethink this approach. In both instances, I was photographing landscape images of the Atlantic Ocean and was challenged by someone nearby about who I was, why I was photographing their country, and what I intended to do with the images. I heard the word “obroni” used towards me for the first time. “Obroni” is a Fante word utilized to describe foreigners and diasporans, with an etymology tracing to both “white man” and “slave.”

In the time since, I’ve started to unpack the layers underneath these interactions through conversations with Ghanaian and diasporan friends. There’s a long intellectual history of Black diasporans, returning to Ghana in search of an ancestral homeland, and not receiving the welcome that they had hoped for. For me, traveling with my camera has expedited questions of power, privilege, and dispossession on the continent.”