Wata Na Life (Krio for ‘Water is Life’), is a phrase I heard time and again in Sierra Leone, a country where water is very much a currency. Commissioned by Wateraid and British Journal of Photography, I spent three months in the country of my heritage exploring the link between water and our changing climate. What I found were communities adapting as best they could to the fall-out from a climate-exacerbated water crisis, amidst corruption and lack of governmental planning. The project is a marked rejection of the “dehumanising” way developing African nations have historically been portrayed by Western media — I counter tropes of “poverty porn” with vibrant collage; celebrating the essence and identities of the people and places of Sierra Leone, blending each location’s scenery, portraits, and objects I photographed to form a more authentic representation than I felt any single photo could convey. I want Sierra Leoneans to look at this work and feel proud. That’s the most important thing. Accompanying eight of the images in this series is an Augmented Reality experience that purposefully deconstructs the layers to reveal the stories embedded in each collage. Accompanying eight of the images in this series is also an Augmented Reality experience in collaboration with Parallel Lab, that purposefully deconstructs the layers to reveal the stories embedded in each collage: https://bit.ly/WNL-WP-web
Read < 1 minute
