Words and images by Uwa Idouzee

They Walked on Water

The earliest available records show that the history of Afro-Finns dates back at least as far as 1899 when Rosa Emilia Clay got her Finnish citizenship as the first person of African descent. They Walked on Water honors this tradition by highlighting first-generation Afro-Finns, who through their hard work and sacrifices built a new life in Finland, and in the process made it possible for the next generation to dream in ways that weren't always possible for them. These photos are a part of an ongoing book project with writer Maryan Abdulkarim.

As me and Maryan we were coming to the same age as our parents were - both of Maryan’s parents and my dad - when they came to Finland, we kept thinking about how different their lives and their experiences had been from ours. We thought not only about how their decisions have influenced what is possible for us, but what that had meant for them.

One of the themes we wanted to explore with this work was the reconstitution of the dreams, which is an integral part of building a life in a new country. As well as looking at the lives and the communities these people built in Finland, we wanted to tell the story of who they were before they immigrated and how they had imagined their lives would unfold. This intersection of dreams meeting reality is interesting because there are so many expectations that are linked into these journeys and into the myths that people hold about Europe and the Nordic countries specifically.

The photos attempt to explore this relationship between people and their environment. How we experience our physical environment often has more to do with the people who share the space with us than the space itself. When you remove other people you become the norm. What is the significance of claiming this space and how these places - the old and the new home - speak to and influence each other not only in these individuals but also in their two homes - the new one and the old one? They left family and familiarity behind, so there’s the loss and loneliness that goes with that, but there’s also the new families, the communities, and the new identities that they built from the ground up in Finland.

These photos are a homage to the people who came before us. It's about who they were, who they’ve become, and about the ways in which they have influenced their new home. A home that wasn’t always the paradise that they had envisioned, but in which they created a space for themselves and for us that came after them.

View more of Uwa’s work here