Resounding with Echoes

These images explore the social landscape of West Africa and America through the lens of road trips in the 1970’s.

West Africa and the Americas have been linked ever since the 1600’s when slave traders forcibly brought millions of enslaved West Africans to the “New World.” At mid-twentieth century, following the independence of West African nations, the two regions were increasingly connected economically, culturally and socially.

These images visually explore the vernacular landscape of everyday people and their environment as revealed riding in mini-busses, trucks and cars through the countryside and towns of West Africa and America.

They suggest, but do not delinate, myriad cultural and socio-economic intersections between the two regions. Often lyrical, they reveal a vibrant shared human experience interwoven with both local and global material culture. The echoes and intersections reverberate — moving both backwards and forwards in time.