This documentary photo project will explore labor, agency, and self-determination in a coastal Tanzanian town existing between global economic extraction and local entrepreneurship.

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During initial fieldwork in December 2025, I built relationships that opened unexpected access with fishing crews, entry into salons and mechanic shops, trust from salt miners and boda boda drivers.

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Bagamoyo—once a terminus of the East African slave trade, now a site of salt mining, fishing, timber export, and small commerce—occupies a space of productive tension. Its workers navigate systems not designed for their benefit while building lives on their own terms. 

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This long-term project will follow individuals across these economies, resisting the Western documentary impulse toward spectacle or pity. I am interested in how dignity persists within structural constraint, and how agency and community manifests in daily acts of work.