WOMEN OF COTE D’IVOIRE
PHOTOGRAPHY WITH PURPOSE
The Digital Diary
Voice, Visibility, Recognition – this is what black women have been fighting for every day of their life. As a woman, you get to fight for yourself to be heard, have rights, respect, honor, and more. But as a black woman, you are constantly fighting two fights: your fight for women’s rights and the recognition of the color of your skin, the honoring of black women. This photo book celebrates African beauty, especially Ivorian beauty. The pages of this photobook are filled with beautiful, strong, and exceptional women, mothers, daughters, and sisters. The Ivorian woman’s beauty is very diverse as Cote d’Ivoire has been a welcoming land for many people from the four corners of Africa earlier in the days. This series not only celebrates the Ivorian woman’s features but also “their brain.” The women you encounter through this book are smart, powerful, elegant, gracious, and the list goes on. For so long, black women have been underrepresented, stereotyped, or body shammed because of their features. Now, we are changing the narratives. I choose to capture who and what I don’t see in art, on television, in the history book. I capture my subject around natural elements as flowers, plants, skies, sand to support the idea of harmony, peace, and beauty. God created things perfectly - black women come in every shade: dark, brown, light, albinos as nature comes with many colors. As nature comes with different textures and looks, black women come with various beautiful features: big nose, thin nose, big lips, thin lips, freckles, afro hair, thick, slim… I choose to explore a new aesthetic of African femininity, African brain, and Ivorian beauty.
Meley Laetitia Sie
Alex Boli is a beautiful and talented singer. She embodies a gracious and soft persona with her Neo-soul and Rn’b music.
POETIC VERSE “African woman, Black woman you are beautiful, and you can do everything that you set your mind to. Freedom is yours, freedom is yours, freedom is yours! Let yourself grow as the cedar tree, as nature grows. You see, nature does not worry as it knows, his creator will provide! So be free and grow like the cedar tree.”
EZEKIEL 17: 23: On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches.