Sarah Waiswa Foundry Presentation

Sarah Waiswa gives a presentation at the 2019 Foundry Photojournalism Workshop about her project documenting Kimbanguism, a Christian religious movement founded by Simon Kimbangu in the Belgian Congo in 1921, and another titled “African Cityzens,” a project co-created with Joel Lukhovi that documents stories around public transport and national borders in Africa.

The Foundry Photojournalism Workshop offers majority world students who could not otherwise afford it a chance to learn from some of the world’s most well respected photojournalists and photography professionals.

Sarah Waiswa is a Ugandan born Kenya-based freelance documentary and portrait photographer with an interest in exploring identity on the African continent, particularly the New African Identity. Her work focuses on changing the narrative on Africa by generating dialogue on developing issues through visual documentation. She is currently involved in a Trans African photographic journey, documenting daily city life in all 54 countries of Africa over a period of five years. After getting both her sociology and psychology degrees and working in a corporate position for a number of years, she decided to pursue photography full time. It was one of the hardest/easiest decisions she ever made.

A storyteller, Sarah’s work focuses on identity and explores themes surrounding isolation and belonging. From the persecution of people with Albinism, to children practicing ballet in Kibera. In more recent work, in the long-term project Kimbanguism, Sarah explores the Kimbanguist faith as an afro Christian movement but one rooted in resistance against a colonial regime that imprisoned their black messiah for 30 years.

Her portraiture project, “Stranger in a Familiar Land”, explores the persecution of albinos in sub-Saharan Africa, in which they are hunted for the perceived magical powers of their body parts. The series sets an albino woman against a background of the Nairobian slums of Kibera, which represent the stormy outside world. The model’s dreamlike pose in societal isolation reflects both the model’s alienation and the photographer’s hesitance towards her society. Waiswa developed the project to raise awareness after reading a newspaper article about treatment of albinos in Tanzania. Part of their shoot consisted of responding to the jeering throng. Aida Muluneh, the photographer who presented the award, described Waiswa’s photography as reflecting her surroundings’ complexities. While Sarah Moroz of i-D praised the clarity with which Waiswa presented the isolation of albino identity, as the model’s lighthearted accessories defied an insurmountable air of rejection, Sean O’Hagan of The Guardian considered the otherwise “brave” effort “oddly overstaged”.

Waiswa’s work explores what she calls a “New African Identity”: how younger generations of Africans feel more expressive and less restrained by tradition than their predecessors. She also sought to counteract stereotypical depictions of Africa, often the result of foreign rather than native photographers. Additionally, many of her subjects are women.

In 2016, Waiswa was working with photographer Joel Lukhovi on “African Cityzens”, which records daily life in multiple African cities. They participated in a 2017 book that shows the Maasai people in truthful, quotidian context, rather than as stereotypical warriors. For Waiswa, the project consummated a search for information on a poorly documented ancient female deity.