It was travel to countries across the African continent for my work that coaxed me into learning photography as an art form.

To get a better camera, to see better images, to use black and white film, to print my own images, to know what I was seeing, to see with my heart. My first photography award was for an image in this series, a portrait of a couple in Zimbabwe called “Hands.” Africa, is not one place of course. It is many countries, and countries within countries. Photographs in this portfolio were taken in Cameroon, Egypt, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Across these diverse geographies, however, I felt an Africa-ness of place and time that I did not feel elsewhere. These places were beautiful and mysterious and frustrating and humbling. They were not my home, but I was grateful to be their guest for a short while.