East African & South African Families - Photographs & Documents

In December 2024, I returned to Uganda for the first time in years. While visiting my family home in Kampala, I opened a dusty suitcase tucked away in a closet. Inside were photographs, letters, permits, and documents belonging to relatives whose stories I only partially knew. What began as a moment of curiosity quickly became a rabbit hole that continues to shape my work today. One driver's permit from 1940 led to an essay on colonial bureaucracy and mobility. A family photograph raised questions about empire, ceremony, and belonging. Other documents revealed people, stories, and connections that had largely disappeared from family memory. The experience reinforced something I've been thinking about for some time: Archives are not simply collections of objects. They're collections of questions. Today, the BlindianProject is beginning to build a living archive of photographs, oral histories, documents, research materials, and everyday traces of life connected to Black and Brown communities. We're starting with East Africa and South Africa. If you have family photographs, letters, documents, recordings, or stories that help illuminate these histories, I'd love to hear from you. I wrote more about the suitcase, the archive, and where this work is heading in the latest edition of my newsletter.