Mali-la

Aw bissimila!

I came to Mali for the first time in early 2000 with a study abroad at my college (Carleton). I had a wonderful life-changing experience and felt obliged to write about it the week after I got home instead of studying for the comprehensive exam in English. I called the project Ja Ta, which is bad bambara for Picture Taking, and you may subject yourself to it if you like.

An File (Here We Are) is a group effort, with photographs and comments by each student on the program. Baara-la is the story of my return for three weeks in March-April 2001, where I photographed my family and people at work.

I sort of stopped taking pictures once I got to Gabon. Now that I live here in Bamako I'm also not really doing a good job documenting everything. Instead I try to just live it up.