"We grew up splashing in the water. The fact that we’re doing it again, after years..."
This piece is a depiction of an afternoon spent with my siblings on the shores of Nam Lolwe after both pollution, and my brother and I being out of the country, had prevented us from spending time together on the beach for a year. I took this photograph with my phone in the middle of splashing in the lake.
This is the first piece in a body of work I am building around Nam Lolwe (Lake Victoria)…titled ‘lake living’. It focuses on the lakeside world I grew up in: how your life is moved, defined by the presence of this giant water body, of this ecosystem, how your body gets used to being held in humidity, to birds and the sunsets and the call of hippos in the night... This is something I didn’t notice until I moved away from home to study in the US. I didn’t notice how much my idea of home and comfort and safety was defined by the lake ecosystem until it wasn’t there anymore.
This piece is printed on handmade paper created using hyacinth and papyrus roots, and recycled office paper. The papermaking process was taught to me by my Dad while I was home in the summer of 2025. I then used his office printer to print out the photograph. What most moved me when I examined the print is the vibrancy of the colours, something that had frustrated me while printing on Epson Luster Photo Paper is the desaturation that would occur. The fibers of the hyacinth and papyrus being visible in the bodies of my siblings is also important to me, as it makes visible the links we have to the landscapes we grow up in: how they make us. This is part of my exploring photography as a process of discovery, what photographs reveal that other ways of knowing can’t.
