1000 Portraits from Sudan

Take a look at the ongoing project by Sudanese photographer Ahmad Abushakeema. The project was created to portray 1000 different faces from Sudan in an artistic attempt to tell the tale of a nation that’s made of various ethnics and backgrounds.

Abushakeema, 27, is an engineering student at Khartoum University. He lived for 17 years in Saudi Arabia before returning to his country, Sudan. He soon realised that the diversity of his society was underreported in the media, hence, he took up the task himself, a portrait at a time.

“I want people to look at the project and understand the cultural range and multitude of our backgrounds and histories,” he said in an interview with the Gahwa Project.

For the project, which is still ongoing, the self-taught photographer goes on the street and approaches strangers with requests to have their pictures taken. Sometimes, though, he is contacted by people who want to be featured on the project. The project will be completed, hopefully, by the end of 2016, when he reaches his mark of a thousand portraits—not every photo taken makes it into the collection.

“After living in Sudan for 9 years, I became conscious of the diversity we have in ethnicities, tribes, religions and backgrounds, but I also noticed a lack of documentation of this diversity. Since I am photographer, I thought of using my skills to share this diversity with the world through my project “1000 Portraits From Sudan” taking a thousand portraits that I hope will carry within them our true image and story.”