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I have added a page that answers some questions I've received about this series.

Yénu bwãndo, loosely translated, means "everything is all right."
Literally translated, it means "the house's breasts are going."

Click on an image to begin the slide show.

From 1995 until 1998, I lived in the tiny village of Arbonga, Benin, West Africa. My experiences during those three years were completely transformative. I developed a close relationship with the family which hosted me (the Sabi Toko family) and formed many intense friendships which last to this day.

In February 2003, I was able to return to Arbonga for several weeks (for the first time in almost five years ). The journey to Arbonga is neither short nor easy. I was so impatient. The closer I got, the more familiar the surroundings began to seem. It was as though I was returning to a long-forgotten home. When I heard people speaking Baatonu, I knew I was close. I couldn't believe I still recognized this language I hadn't heard spoken in five years.

anna yénu? yénu bwãndo

Unlike my first stay in Arbonga, this time my ideas were a bit more organized: I wanted to explain the story of this place in a simple way to which anyone can relate. I went to each family in the village and photographed whomever wanted to be photographed. I asked my friends to tell me their story in their own words, and at the same time, I created portraits of these individuals, often with their children or grandchildren present. This is the result.

When translating these stories into English, I tried to keep the rhythm and the structure similar to the original in order to better portray the manner in which the Bariba speak.

The text which appears in italics is the story of Arbonga and is an integral part of this body of work. The text which appears in brackets is provided simply as background information.

My motivation for creating this work is to help make the lives of these individuals seem real to us in a visceral way. We are used to seeing Africans portrayed as cultural curiosities or worse, the pitiable victims of war or famine. But something we who are not African often overlook is the basic humanity of these people. I'm afraid it is an intrinsic part of human nature to divide the world into "us" and "them" camps: people who are like us, and people who are not like us. And whether we like it or not, we all place more value on people who are like us than those who are not.

The good news is that the definitions of "us" and "them" are changing with time. An ever-increasing awareness of the world around us is gradually making the definition of "us" more inclusive. My goal is to assist this process as best as I can. By showing the residents of Arbonga in their homes with their children telling stories about where they come from, I am attempting to show that they are not that different from you and me. Cultural differences are apparent (they are dressed differently and their houses look very different), but beneath those superficialities, the similarities are clear: they are proud of who they are, they love their children, and they want to make life better for their descendants.

I am focusing on Arbonga because of my special relationship with that particular village, but this could just as easily have been done in any of a million other villages in Africa or Asia or anywhere else. We live in a time when most of us understand intellectually that all humans are created equal, but when we finally understand intuitively the humanity of everyone else (and behave accordingly), we will have made tremendous progress toward solving so many of the problems that plague us.