100+ interviews | 3,323 photos | 7 countries | 3 months
Holding the line... is a documentary photography project featuring the people who stand, day after day, on the frontline of the HIV response across Africa. The fieldwork is done. Now begins part two: sharing.
From July to September 2025, I traveled through Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, and Uganda—listening, engaging, and photographing. More than a hundred people across 27 local organizations allowed me into their lives. They spoke with honesty about their resilience, their heartbreaks, their triumphs, and the weight of advocacy. Their stories now sit with me in thousands of images, hours of transcripts, and notes that spill over hundreds of pages. The question that lingers is: how to do them justice?
Each photo and story I share here on holding the line... is free to be amplified—whether in advocacy, education, or your own storytelling. Credit the photographer, use the captions, and link back here. If you have larger ideas for collaboration, contact me. This work was always meant to be bigger than me.
The Preview Series is a first gesture—seven hand-picked images with brief descriptions. Together, they are a pinhole glimpse into a wider tapestry of perspectives, heartbreak, and persistence. A preview of what it means to hold the line at a moment when global HIV funding declines, when USAID persists only in the advocacy of it's former staff, and where communities are left in shock, improvising new ways forward.
Hands are the focus of this first series. A quiet obsession, perhaps, but one that revealed itself often before words. Many people who wished to remain anonymous offered only their hands. Others spoke with them wildly when words fell short. In the clinic, hands deliver an HIV test. In the community, they pass condoms in a discreet gesture. In private, they cover a face when the rumors get too loud. Always, they carry the burden of care.
Hands that console. Hands that carry. Hands holding the line...
Read all preview articles now live on the blog:
- Ghana: Between red-red, fufu, and taboo
- Rwanda: Rebirth from under the weight of genocide
- Uganda: Shedding layers on solidarity, resilience, and dependence
- Kenya: Visibility and sustainability, but on the other hand
- Mauritius: Gripped by the past, moving in slow-motion
- Mozambique: Pressing play on the HIV response
- South Africa: Flickering reflections in a black mirror
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