Afar is both a place and a people in Ethiopia. I captured the image in this post during my first visit to Ethiopia when I was about the same age as the young Afar man in the photograph. I was struck by his elegance and his "do." Everyone within the frame of this picture, with a change of clothes, could have been standing on a corner in Chicago.
What does Afar, Ethiopia have to do with Bayview-Hunters Point? Digital Artist Mark Sabb and I had many conversations duing the various production stages of Tracing Poetic Memory in Bayview Hunters Point. Often those exchanges led to adjustments, hard realizations, discovery, and a deeper interpretation of our project.
One realization was that my life, whether I was in Addis Ababa, Paris, Cairo, Stockholm, or Chicago, was all related to Bayview Hunters Point. I am who I am today because of that early experience and a significant part of my journey could be traced to Jerrold and Kiska. Some how making my way to the Danakil Desert or to Axum was linked to my childhood in Hunters Point. Some of my creative collaborations with Mark make that connection directly as in our Feature "Pyramids."