Caroline Sohie | Only This Moment (2024)

A young man sits on a century-old wall of a colonial graveyard, the horizon of the Swahili coast stretching before him. This land is layered with charged histories—once a point of arrival for enslaved people from the hinterland and later a stage for shifting colonial powers, now poised to become a container port along the New Silk Road. Yet the coast is also a site of resilience and identity, where Swahili culture—shaped by African, Arab and Indian lineages—continues to define daily life, ritual, and belonging.

The photograph holds a moment suspended between these forces, where contested pasts and rapid transformation converge within an ever-evolving cultural hybridity.