SOHIE

TO THROW OFF MELANCHOLY

Tanzania, 2015-17

Bagamoyo, a rapidly evolving village on the urban periphery of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, is moulded by historic encounters at the intersection of land and sea. Bwagamoyo, ‘to throw off melancholy’, was the name given by caravan porters reaching the shore, in anticipation of reunion with their loved ones. During the 19th Century, the town emerged as a principal caravan entrepot due to the slave trade, connecting the African hinterland with Zanzibar. Subsequently, it became the capital of the German East African colony and during WWI the town was subsumed by the British Tanganyika Protectorate until national independence.

The turn of the millennium was marked by new aspirations, enforced by global economic dynamics and emerging capitalistic values. The looming construction of the largest container port of East Africa, unleashed a trajectory of unprecedented urbanisation which dramatically alters the physical environment as well as the social and cultural attributes of society. 

The changing settings were photographed during a three year investigation. They reflect the fluidity of the modern condition which gradually infuses a traditional society, inducing processes of social change and reconceptualisation of place and identity. Historic territories are recodified as the imaginary shifts, defined by global and local claims and liquid perceptions of the primitive and the modern.