Helen Gebregiorgis is an Eritrean-American researcher and visual storyteller. She recently held a photography exhibition titled Lagos: Budding 50, at the Revolving Art Incubator in Victoria Island. This project was inspired by the Lagos @ 50 commemorations and “celebrates the stories of diverse, ambitious and resilient young Lagosians as they strive to better themselves and their communities”. She spoke with Adefoyeke Ajao about her work and her reasons for embarking on the visual storytelling project.

Why did you choose Lagos to be the focus of this project?

I was here in mid-April until mid-May, and I saw adverts for the different events that were happening as part of the Lagos at 50 celebrations. I saw pictures of the people that they were profiling and I was made aware that they were influential, prominent figures here in Lagos. My background is in film/video and I had done some work previously in East Africa – Kenya – that focused on African celebrations. I had an interest in such commemorations and I sought opportunities to explore beyond the people that were profiled. My target was the younger generation as well as people that moved to Lagos because another interest of mine is migration. I wanted to answer that question of what brings people to a city, why people stay and why people leave. I saw an opportunity to do this project in Lagos because of a website that I’m developing; it’s actually at the beginning stages and it’s called Africa Photo Stories. It’s a website that I’m hoping to build into a platform that is able to tell different stories from an African perspective, using African voices. This project was an opportunity for me to meet people from Lagos and I am so happy and I feel very fortunate to meet everybody who was willing to open up and share their experiences with me.

What have you learnt so far from working on this project?

I think the emerging theme for me was resilience and this was expressed by the majority of the people that I spoke to. Without me using the word resilience, people would use that word and would express it in different ways. Some people had difficult beginnings in their journeys but are okay now while some are still looking forward to their dreams. I think that was the theme that stuck out the most for me and one of the things that I just found really interesting and really beautiful about Lagos and Lagosians is the ‘go for it and get it done’ attitude. That’s one thing that I’ve learned and that’s one thing that I am taking away from meeting everybody and from being here.

Do you think resilience is a consequence of living in a megacity?

At the beginning, I had a limited amount of time to find my target number of fifty subjects just to stick with the whole theme of Lagos at 50, and I wanted to interview as many people. I remember at the beginning it was very challenging because I wondered how I would sell the idea of doing this project. One of the things I found really helpful was reaching out to various people just to get the message out. There were a few people I interviewed who were able to open up their networks to me and so I was able to reach that target number and even more. One thing I struggled with was the traffic here, but it amazes me because people wake up so early to get to one part of the city and they get back home late and then do the same thing consistently. I know this because most of the people I interviewed expressed it. It’s amazing because it also reveals the different ways that people get by. There was this one person who spoke about resilience and he was a bit critical because sometimes when a person is resilient, it affects the person negatively since he resigns to fate instead of thinking of ways to make changes and improve the situation. It’s a great thing to strive, to keep working towards making it, but how do you go beyond that resilience and conquer those challenges? How do you use that resilience towards betterment for yourself as well as your community? I’m also quite interested in the contributions a lot of people make because it’s those small contributions that make Lagos the city it is. If more people could focus and do their little bit, I believe it can make a positive change.

Did you experience any challenges while taking your portraits of Lagos? Were you accosted by security agents and did you encounter any resistance from people?

These portraits were taken during the interviews. I met each person, one by one, and spent at least an hour with each person. Sometimes I would meet 3 to 4 different people in different parts of Lagos. It was very interesting for me because I visited different parts of Lagos. The pictures of the city are of everyday life, and the people that I interviewed gave me permission to take their pictures. No, I did not have security with me. I also took some of my pictures while I was in a car, which I think also reflects the theme of movement and migration. I put some of them here purposely because I wanted to show [people’s] movement as well as myself in movement. A lot of my photos were observational, and I think this goes for a lot of photographers and people who work with visual arts: we can’t separate ourselves from the images we create; our work is a representation of how we see things. I try to be mindful especially when taking photos of vulnerable people, like children. Even if they are excited to have their photos taken, most of them don’t know where their photos are going, so I try my best not to reveal their identities because at the end of the day, I don’t want someone who is not entirely aware of where his image is going to be taken advantage of because of someone else’s benefit. I believe in ethical photography and I think more storytellers should be mindful of protecting their subjects.

You describe yourself as a visual storyteller, what media do you use apart from film and photography?

I think writing can be classified as visual storytelling, though I know some will argue that it’s not. I write poetry – but I don’t share it as much as I do creative writing. A lot of my creative writing work is visual: they are descriptive of the things that I’m describing, so I think I use visual storytelling specifically because I’m into photography and video/film. But I also do a lot of creative writing and I think that’s another form of visual storytelling.

What challenges do you face as a photographer?

The first one that comes to mind is that people may not entirely understand why I’m doing the things that I’m doing. I grew up in the United States, but my family is from Eritrea and some people I know keep asking me why I keep going back to Africa instead of staying behind and making a living from something more secure. For me, it’s getting people to believe in the work that I’m doing. I’m grateful that I have a lot of support from friends and family, but some people are like “oh, you’re so passionate about it, but how are you going to make money from this?” It’s challenging because everyone believes you’re not successful until you’re making a lot of money and getting a lot of exposure. I’m also interested in research work especially when it comes to human connections. Migration is one of my research interests and I’ve done some research specifically on Eritrean migration because I’m interested in movement and how it impacts our identities – that’s something I’ve found challenging in the last couple of years. I did my masters in Media and International Development because I wanted to explore ways of connecting those two [migration and identity] and to use storytelling as a key tool to connect those dots. At the end of the day, that’s what I hope my work does. I hope it does even more because storytelling can do more than entertain, it can educate and inform, it can even impact and empower people.

Why have you chosen to work on migration?

My parents were refugees in Sudan in the ‘80s and that was due to the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea. I was born in Sudan, but my parents migrated to the US – to Chicago – when I was two years old. I was able to connect with Eritrea, and with my African origin because of the stories that they would share. In 2008, I travelled to Eritrea for the first time and it sparked an interest to learn more about my country as well as about different parts of Africa because I realised that I had stereotypes that I initially thought I didn’t have. There were things I didn’t know because of how Africa and Africans were depicted to me while growing up in Chicago. I didn’t understand why people were leaving Eritrea because my experience was wonderful. In 2009, sanctions were placed on Eritrea and in 2013 there was the boat that sank off Lampedusa’s shore where over 300 people drowned. Suddenly Eritrea was in the international media and there was a lot more attention because no one could understand what was happening in that small country with a small population that could make so many people leave in large numbers. At one point they [Eritreans] were one of the largest migrant groups next to Syrians and so, it was very confusing for me. I realised that although I am from there and part of my identity is from there, my confusion came about because I have lived through a different experience and I may be seeing things in a very different way. It was really challenging for me because there were people that I knew that had lost their lives. I wanted to explore the question of migration because my parents migrated – albeit for different reasons – and I also did some reflection on my own experience with travelling around. Migration is something that people are very critical about and I think people who are very critical about it have to ask themselves why they are. I think what we need to be asking is what pushes people out of their countries, whether it’s conflict, opportunity or curiosity. I think migration is something that people don’t entirely understand, but it’s clear that a lot of people are leaving for developed countries, so what is it about these countries that attract them and drives them to take these risky routes. There’s so much to discuss concerning migration and every person that is leaving has a distinct experience.

If you had to migrate unwillingly and you had the option of taking just one thing, what would it be?

An album full of photos; specifically of family. For me, one of the major things that give me strength is my family – my parents and siblings – and I think that’s what drives me every day. The actual work I do is because of how my parents instilled in me stories of the origins of my identity. For me, seeing their faces even if they are not physically with me gives me the strength to keep going.

*Lagos: Budding 50, A Photography Exhibition by Helen Gebregiorgis ran from 9^th December 2017 to 15th December 2017. The project was supported by Ford Foundation.