Francis Kokoroko

Francis Kokoroko was born in 1987 in Koforidua, Ghana. While studying for his bachelor’s degree in computer science, he took a photography course in Accra. He was soon drawn to the power of image making and visual storytelling. Kokoroko has a keen interest in documenting the upbeat everyday life of Africans and their ever-evolving cultures. He depicts his home country using portraiture, telling stories through the breathtaking moments he captures. In his ongoing series, Accra’s Growing Middle Class, Kokoroko looks at how people interact with each other in society. He seeks to expose the widening gap between the rich and the poor in the city, highlighting on our human need to live in dignity. In 2017, Kokoroko has participated in the World Press Photo West African Master Class. He is working on long-term projects for Reuters Wider Image. In parallel, he continues to record his journeys through Africa as well as his encounters in Ghana as seen in his series on Ghanaian counterculture featuring DJ Steloo.

Nyaba Ouedraogo

Nyaba Leon Ouedraogo was born in 1978 in Burkina Faso. After reluctantly abandoning a sports career because of an accident, he decided to engage in photography. As a self-taught artist, he learned the principles of photography and applied his curiosity to this art using photojournalism and documentary photography. Ouedraogo‘s images are a disturbing evidence of the harsh reality in Africa, capturing marginal people who live and work in precarious conditions. He reveals the changes happening in African societies, focusing on persistent ecological issues related to plastic and electronic waste. In his series The Hell of Copper (2008), he depicted the terrifying life of people working on the so-called cemetery of abandoned computers in Accra, Ghana. Workers set the electronic waste on fire in order to isolate the copper they can sell, even though it is an extremely dangerous and poisonous procedure. Ouedraogo’s imagery is valuable because it represents a new archive of the contemporary lifestyle in Africa with all of its social and ecological issues on which the Western world is unaware.

Leila Alaoui

Leila Alaoui was born in 1982 in Paris, France to a French mother and Moroccan father. She studied photography at the City University of New York. Her work explores the building of identity, cultural diversity, and migration in the Mediterranean area. Using photography and video, she expresses various social realities through a visual language lying on the boundary between portraiture and documentary photography. Her series No Pasara (2008) commissioned by the European Union, whose title means “entry denied”, depicts young Moroccans dreaming of an Eldorado on the other side of the sea. She travelled through the country to learn about illegal migration, capturing the essence of these desperate young people. Alaoui’s humanitarian commitment also included various photographic missions for prominent NGOs. She was seriously wounded during the terrorist attacks in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on January 15, 2016. She had gone there on a photographic assignment for Amnesty International to produce a report on women’s rights. She did not recover, and died 3 days after. Her work is preserved through The Fondation Leila Alaoui, which defends her values and support artists working to promote human dignity.

Malin Fezehai

Malin Fezehai was born in 1984 in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Eritrean father. She took her first picture in high school for an assignment in photography class. After studying photography in her homeland, she moved to New York where she studied at the International Center of Photography. She now specializes in portraiture and photojournalism. Fezehai has spent much of her career documenting issues of displacement. Her photographs depict various sensitive subjects such as the daily life of African refugees in Israel, the underage workers in Ethiopia, and the war torn lives of women in Sri Lanka. In 2018, she worked at The New York Times as a visual reporter for the Surfacing column, a one-year residency where she focused on innovative visual storytelling. Fezehai was commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme to photograph survivors of violent extremism across Sub-Saharan Africa. She published a book titled Survivors (2016), which sought to remind people about the growth of violent extremism and the devastating impact on the civilian population in Africa.