newyorker:

A Harlem Photographer Captures the Distinctive Style of Senegal

The thirty-year-old photographer Joshua Woods grew up in Harlem’s Le Petit Sénégal, a small enclave along West 116th Street, where, as a child, he heard fly, gold-chain-rocking, elder male émigrés speak gloriously of easy black living and independence in Senegalese cities like Dakar or Pikine. Woods dreamed of seeing it for himself and, like many African-Americans, of tracing his roots back to Africa. In early October of last year, he finally embarked, with his Pentax 6x7 film camera, on his first trip to the country. The pictures he made are diary-like reflections that celebrate black life in Senegal.

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