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It was in Africa that I first picked up a camera and began to photograph. By that time, I had already lived a year in Africa, so I felt comfortable with the people and acquainted with their way of life. These photographs are some of my first, taken between 1963 and 1965 in Nigeria, Dahomey (since renamed Benin) and while crossing the Sahara. Africa was familiar to me, but photography was new.

I had flown into Afica blind — with no idea of what to expect — in 1960 to study at the University of Ghana. At that time Ghana was the only country to have gained its freedom from colonialism, but I knew little else about the country or the continent.

During the year that followed, however I was tutored by my professors, most of them African and taken in hand by my fellow students who introduced me to African culture and society. As the only non-African among the 150 students in my dormitory, my education took place not only in the classroom but also through endless late-night conversations, in visits to villages and homes and by traveling throughout West Africa. At the university, in the markets and villages, on the buses and in the nightclubs, my world was exclusively African.

I left Ghana to enter the African Studies Program at Boston University. My year of total immersion had a profound effect on me. Africa had entered my bloodstream. My entire world view, my sense of beauty and aesthetics had been shaped in a way that changed me forever. Studying at B. U. for my M. A. in African history deepened my involvement mentally and spiritually, but I wanted to live in Africa rather than just think it. I was determined to return.

Nearing the end of my course work, I found my way. I was hired by Harvard University to go to the Western Region of Nigeria to help build, teach and administer an experimental American-style high school. It was at this point that I decided to buy a camera, and soon after my arrival in Nigeria, I began to photograph. I had already traveled there — by mammy wagon, train, bus and bicycle — so I knew something of the country. On my return, I spent almost three years at the Comprehensive High School, Aiyetoro, during which time I traveled to all regions of Nigeria and beyond — to neighboring Dahomey (Benin), to South Africa and by Land Rover across the Sahara through Algeria to Morocco. I made many new friends and during my travels saw many new aspects of the vast African mosaic.

As a photographer, I concentrated on what I knew and liked best — the people and how they lived. Africans had taught me to see. Extremely observant, very little escapes their notice — or commentary. I can’t say that I reached the same level of perception. But through their example, I learned to look carefully at my surroundings. My language of study and interpretation became photography.

For me, African beauty was not the exotic African natives of so many coffee table picture books. And in West Africa it certainly wasn’t the animals and breathtaking landscapes of safari brochures. I found my deepest appreciation of Africa in the small gestures of everyday living, watching people go about their daily chores and pleasures. It all became perfectly natural to me. I found that the beauty of Africa was not external but wrapped up in the totality of life.

I had come into Africa and discovered a sympathetic rhythm of life that contained energy and humor and was full of grace. Living right in the middle of it, surrounded by Africa, I felt privileged — and I still do. These photographs are my way of showing my appreciation to the Africans who taught me and to the Africa I knew and loved.

My first exhibition (in July `1970 at the M.I.T. Student Center) was of my photographs from Africa. Now — more than 30 years later — at a time when images of Africa are almost always exotic or tragic — I have reprinted 10 of those photographs for inclusion in this limited edition portfolio. The photographs were scanned and cleaned (but not otherwise changed) and printed from digital files.

Individual prints are numbered in editions of 20. All photographs are numbered, titled and signed on the back. The Into Africa portfolio is an edition of 10 (numbers 1-10 of the print edition). There are also 2 Artists Proofs of the portfolio.

After leaving Nigeria in 1965, I returned to Harvard where I earned EDM and EDD degrees and over the years began to build a life in Boston. I switched my academic concentration from Africa to urban education and went to work for the Boston Public Schools, helping plan new schools to alleviate racial imbalance. I bought and renovated a townhouse in the South End of Boston (not to be confused with South Boston) fell in love, got married, and eventually transitioned from academia to photography. Africa grew more remote but never faded from my mind. Increasingly I wondered about what was going on at the University of Ghana and what had happened to the Comprehensive High School, Aiyetoro, that I had helped build. News from Africa in general and Nigeria in particular was mostly depressing.

It took me over 30 years to go back, to actually book and buy a ticket, although I spent much of those intervening years in Boston still thinking of Africa. I had grown up in Ghana and Nigeria — after college, that is — and I had come away part African, unable ever again to feel fully Western, like an immigrant in my own country. Also, Africa was where I had first picked up a camera, and I wanted to return as a photographer, seeking to explore both the familiar and the new. But much time had passed. I was returning in order to revive a dream, to see if it was possible to breathe new life into an old affection.

I made two return trips, first to Ghana in 1998 and then in 1999 to Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, and Ivory Coast. These photographs are a selection of what I found on my return.

I have also self-published two books of photographs and memoirs of my trips to Africa in the 1990s – Inside Africa Vol 3 (1998) and Inside Africa Vol 4 (1999).