akwaaba

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

Ghana | Sunday, November 6, 2011 | 5 photos

I grew up in Weehawken, New Jersey. I took a darkroom photography class in high school and was hooked. There is nothing more magical than watching a blank sheet of paper transform into a photo you, yourself took. Now, I am a very poor college student studying at Tisch School of the Arts of NYU, with the hopes to become a documentary filmmaker. Still photography is still a huge passion of mine – I don’t leave home without my hand-me-down Canon 7D. (Thanks Aunt Michele!) I hope to translate my photography skills into becoming a cinematographer, traveling around the universe with a camera. Currently I’m living in Accra, Ghana where I’m studying, making a documentary about an e-waste dump called Agbogbloshie, and working with an orphanage called City of Refuge, that houses trafficked children from the Volta Region. I recently took a trip to Egypt and traveled around Cairo, Luxor, Alexandria, and camped out in the Sahara Desert with a friendly Bedouin guide. Needless to say, life is a lot different here than in New Jersey, and being able to document it through photography has kept me sane. I find it hard to write about my experiences, but luckily the sound of my shutter opening and closing can speak for me.