Musician, Dakar 2010

A North Korean attends the unveiling of the African Renaissance Monument in Dakar.

The Rev Herbert Daughtry Sr. takes a moment in Senegal

A poster on Goree Island. During the slave trade this is the last place many Africans were held before being shipped to the Americas.

To see more please click on this link.

Hostess Yaune Ndiaye. Dakar, April 2010

To see more please click on this link.

A man stands in the door of no return on Gorée Island in Senegal where slaves left Africa bound for the Americas.

I just got back from Senegal where I spent three days documenting that nation’s celebrations of the new African Renaissance Monument as well as the 50th anniversary of independence. This week I will feature images from that trip. To see more please click on this link.

Masai farmer. Tanzania 2006. © Damaso Reyes

I’m heading to Senegal for a short trip! I will post photos as I make them so stay tuned. See you next week!

Rwandans search for mass graves during the 10th anniversary of the genocide. © Damaso Reyes

Student. Zanizibar, Tanzania 2006 © Damaso Reyes

To see more images from Tanzania please visit my website.

A victim of sexual violence during the genocide in Rwanda tells her story. © Damaso Reyes

To see more images from Rwanda please visit damaso.com

Children at a reeducation center in Rwanda. May 1999. © Damaso Reyes

To see more images from Rwanda please visit my website.

Genocide memorial. Rwanda 1999 © Damaso Reyes

So you’ve gone to school, taken a workshop with a master photographer, had lessons with me or just studied on your own… now what? What path will you choose? More important is why? In my observations many people present themselves with false choices in order to convince themselves to choose the road most traveled down. “There’s no money in photojournalism, I should shoot weddings,” is something someone told me not too long ago. What they forget is that dreams are never rational. They are the manifestation of our inner most desires.

Have you ever walked alone down a deserted road in the middle of the night far from home? Fear, uncertainty and panic are just some of the emotions that work their way through your mind as you listen for any out of place sounds, a shadow moving out of the corner of your eye. Having done just this in cities from Jakarta to Berlin to New Orleans I’ve come to terms with the long dark road.

Dancing in the dark. Stuttgart 2007 © Damaso Reyes.

I decided many years ago I didn’t want to pursue the path other had laid out for me. Perhaps I was too restless; maybe I just didn’t like the idea of creating another set of footprints on a well travelled road. I came to a fork in the road and took it, not knowing where it would lead.

I still don’t know where this road is going, but then again that’s the whole point.

There aren’t any explorers any more. You can’t really say I’m going to the ends of the Earth the way a 16^th century prince might have. But you can become a visual explorer; you can travel down roads that have been forgotten and that go unpaved; you can challenge yourself to walk down that dark and lonely road far from home because that’s the best way to get to where you want to go, even if you have no idea where there is.

Hands. Switzerland 2007 © Damaso Reyes

But the road is dark. Fear will be your constant companion; uncertainty the jacket you wrap yourself in to protect against the night. I’ve come to live with these things, to accept, if not love, the feelings I get when I board a plane or train or boat destined for a foreign land armed only with the hope that if everything goes right I might have a chance. Of course often the best laid plans do often go astray. You find yourself off the map, not quite where dragons lie but close enough.

Then you look around, take stock of your surroundings and yourself and say: “this is why I became an explorer.”

Photography is about the why.

A young boy discovers a skull of a victim of the Rwandan Genocide. © Damaso Reyes

Why are you taking this photograph? Once you can answer this question the how becomes much easier to understand. Of course many photographers never answer they why of what they do, they simply take whatever job and the money that comes with it. On the one hand I suppose this is perfectly reasonable, assuming you don’t mind simply being a craftsperson. It is a venerable profession but one that I am not that interested in. I want to be more than someone who takes good pictures; I strive to create images which transcend the moment in which they were created and represent something larger than themselves.

Many photojournalists, and many more editors if I might make an observation, are simply concerned with the transmission of information. This, of course, is important and necessary, just as stenography is.

Turkish girls wait for the metro in Berlin. Germany 2006. © Damaso Reyes

I didn’t sign up to become a court reporter.

The truth of the matter is that the stenographers are winning. The space in which long form and documentary photojournalism exists is continuing to shrink and until the next venue which can support this work becomes a reality more and more people are leaving this field. Of even more concern is that while there are many committed photojournalists who stubbornly keep doing the work that is important to them it is increasingly becoming difficult to do that work. If a story is too obscure, too far away or not in a hot spot, no one, at least in the newspaper and magazine world, wants to pay for it.

There has to be another way.

As long as we remain passionate about the why of what we do I believe documentary photojournalism will survive. As in many things in life, you have to have faith…

Traditional singing in Brittany. France 2008.