These children are Paulina Kofi and Joseph Dadzie, from the tiny village of Akwidaa on Ghana's Atlantic Coast. At a little local guesthouse the village families were invited to an annual shawa, or outdoor party round a tall vertical bonfire built Ghana-fashion. Paulina and Joseph seem to have ascended into a sugar trance in their beautiful special occasion dresses.
Christian's senior brother is the local assemblyman, his grandmother Mercy is the village midwife. Akwidaa lies in the shadow of a rotted European castle and the houses are on sand, with no floor. Local people call it castle, but it's a prison, into which captured people were carried and then never seen again. Their cries could be heard in the village but no one could reach them through the four foot thick stone walls. These ancestors then were herded sideways through the narrow Gate of No Return and carried far away from Africa, to grow cotton.
This self-portrait originated New Year's Eve when I was walking out the door to a party. I had just visited my mother and she said, come closer, let me slap that smile off your face. I was a guest in her house some three months after Africa and when I left that day I scoured from the spare room every hair and scrap of paper, every feather.
