Back Story
“The place I called home, and coutless other communities have taught me that communities have always been telling their own stories. Long before I had a camera, before I understood words like visual anthropology or visual ethnography, there were people around me who carried the memory, knowledge, humor, struggles, and hopes of our communities. They were storytellers, even if no one called them that. I became a photographer because I wanted to document those stories and make space for them to be seen. My work has grown from documenting the people and places I know into a deeper practice of learning with communities through photography, oral history, visual ethnography, documentary storytelling, and social research. I believe the people who live these experiences should not exist only as subjects in someone else’s research, documentary, or publication. They are knowledge holders. They are historians, artists, researchers, witnesses, and authors of their own lives. What I am trying to build is an infrastructure that makes space for that knowledge to move between worlds: between communities and universities, between lived experience and research, between local memory and public history, and between the people who tell stories and the institutions that have traditionally had the power to decide which stories matter. I want to help re-build a future where communities like the one I come from are not simply documented, studied, or represented, but are recognized as producers of knowledge, culture, and history. For me, this is not just an academic or professional idea. It is personal. It comes from home. It comes from the people who taught me how to see before I ever picked up a camera.”
Watch the Story
Eight-hour journey into one of Africa’s most misunderstood communities.
Because every community deserves to be seen with dignity, context, and humanity.
Featuring: @sadatphotostories
Watch now: @wherejodyat
The Locals is an interdisciplinary initiative bridging participetory photography, visual storytelling and enthnography research to document lived experience and expand public understanding of underrepresented communities.
Through collaborative research, visual ethnography, exhibitions, publications, workshops, and living archives, we work alongside communities to document everyday life, preserve cultural memory, and produce knowledge grounded in dignity, local experience, and lived expertise.
Our work creates spaces where local knowledge can be documented, shared, and connected to wider public, cultural, and academic conversations while remaining accountable to the people and communities from whom that knowledge emerges.
FRIENDS FORVER
WhereJodyAt journeys into Kibera, Nairobi with @sadatphotostories,to meet the older men and women whose lives Continue to shape our lives. We explores the realities of aging, community, and resilience through honest conversations and lived experiences.
I am a documentary photographer, visual researcher, and a visual storyteller whose practice is informed by visual anthropology, ethnographic methods, and long-term community engagement. My work explores how people experience, remember, and shape the places they call home, using photography not simply as a means of documentation but as a method of research, observation, and public inquiry.
Working at the intersection of documentary photography, visual ethnography, and participatory storytelling, I collaborate with communities to examine everyday life, cultural memory, aging, urbanisation, identity, and social change. Rather than producing images from the outside, I develop long-term relationships that allow stories to emerge through trust, sustained presence, and shared experience.
My methodology combines documentary photography with qualitative research. Through participant observation, oral histories, in-depth interviews, community conversations, and visual documentation, I seek to understand how lived experiences are shaped by history, culture, environment, and systems of inequality. This interdisciplinary approach enables me to produce work that is both visually compelling and grounded in rigorous field research.
Growing up in Kibera, one of Africa’s largest informal settlements, has profoundly shaped my perspective.
It taught me that communities often represented through poverty, conflict, or crisis possess complex histories, rich cultural knowledge, and everyday forms of resilience that are frequently overlooked. My work challenges dominant narratives by centering the voices, experiences, and knowledge of the people who live them.
My projects span documentary photography, visual ethnography, public history, and community-based research, exploring themes including aging, public health, youth, faith, identity, pride and the cultural life of urban communities. Across each project, I ask how visual storytelling can contribute not only to representation but also to knowledge production, dialogue, and social change.
My work has been commissioned, exhibited, and published internationally, and I continue to collaborate with researchers, universities, development organisations, and editorial platforms on projects that bridge documentary practice with socially engaged research.
I see photography as more than a visual record. It is a way of asking questions, building relationships, and generating knowledge. By combining documentary practice with ethnographic inquiry, I seek to create work that deepens public understanding of people and place while contributing to broader conversations in research, culture, and social justice.
We are seeking $40,000 to establish the foundation for The Locals Research & Storytelling Exchange—a community-rooted creative storytelling hub where research, photography, and lived experience intersect.
Guiding Priciples
Trust Through Respect and Transparency
We always approach everyone with honesty about our intentions and the importance of their perspective.
Prioritize Empathy and Patience
We understand that people may have personal fears or reservations. We love to meet people where they are, physically and emotionally by being patient, understanding their hesitations, and allowing them the time and space to open up on their terms.
Professionalism and Integrity
It’s not always a must to share our stories, We treat everyone with dignity and respect. We believe, relationships built on integrity often lead to future opportunities for connection.
