Nicky Quamina-Woo interview

_ Winning the prestigious annual Marilyn Stafford FotoReportage Award is no mean feat. We speak to its latest recipient about her work AsTheWaterComes, photographed in Senegal.

Documentary photographer

Nicky is a black and Polynesian visual researcher who divides her time between southeast Asia, the African continent and New York. The tenacity of the human spirit fascinates Nicky and influences her approach to making images.

Although Nicky initially studied photography psychology at university, she came to realise that her true interests lay in celebrating the nuances of the human story rather than in just parsing them. After initially working as a photo producer and photo assistant, Nicky became a documentary photographer threeand-a-half years ago.

Nicky won the Marilyn Stafford FotoReportage Award 2020, for her project AsTheWater Comes. Prior to that, Nicky was a recipient of the inaugural Reuters Storytelling grant for her work on a Tanzaniabased project about the intersection of western medicine and witchcraft.

www.nickywoo.com

Right: A boy on a ruined sea wall in Saint Louis, Senegal.

icky Quamina-Woo’s AsTheWater Comes was photographed in northern Senegal. It shines a light on the ineffective response of the Senegalese government to the plight of people suffering from the effects of rising sea levels. Some 25% of the Senegalese coast is at high risk of coastal erosion, and this figure is estimated to increase to 75% by 2080 if sea levels continue to rise.

NMis-steps by the authorities have had major implications for local communities. The village of Doun Baba Dieye had to be abandoned after a channel was dug through a small peninsula that afforded its residents some protection against the surge of the ocean; families had to move inland to tented camps, away from their livelihoods near the sea.

As 63% of Senegal’s population is aware of the negative effects of environmental

change, there is public support for government intervention. But promoting appropriate intervention is critical: the mindset of policymakers and the public over the threats posed by coastal erosion and climate change needs to be transformed.

That’s what Nicky hoped to achieve with this project, and the judges of the Marilyn Stafford

Award clearly agreed. “These issues are urgent,” says Nicky. “And the clock is ticking.”

those mythical countries that you always hear so much about, with its stunning beautiful people and fashion sense – similar to Mali, with its music. I was initially meant to work on a project in Mauritania, but as it was Ramadan, I thought I’d ease into the region and spend some time in the more liberal Senegal before making my way into conservative Mauritania.

I’m absolutely in love with smaller fishing communities near the sea, so I left the bustling city of Dakar after a week or two and headed north to Saint Louis, which also used to be a colonial French settlement and the original capital of the country. As I wandered around near the ocean, I came upon these destroyed homes lining the coastline.

Top:

Fisherman Daoud Diallo sits under the bow of a boat for shade. His family home became uninhabitable due to erosion and he now shares a room with nine other people.

Above:

The shell of a sea-facing home that has been destroyed in Saint Louis.

Shocked, I started asking questions about what had happened. I quickly began researching the topic and set about asking people about the effect on their lives, and began a project on it while I was there.

Senegal is a lovely place. People talk about how visually stunning it is, as well as the glamour of the people – tall with beautiful skin that, to me, looks like the warmth of the sun is pouring forth from it. After being there for a while, I was also struck by their tenacity, sense of community, brilliance and will to joy at every turn.

moment there is the tented Khar Yalla camp that the government set up, but that’s tricky, as most of these families are comprised of fishermen.

They make their living needing to physically see the ocean each day, to know when it’s choppy or gusting. The tented site is an hour’s ride away from the water, which makes it difficult for them.

Absolutely. As I explained the story and what I was doing, families began to open up and invite me into their homes. They all understood that the more media attention they get, the more help could come their way.

Above: Babacar Diallo swims in the ocean in Saly, Senegal.

Above:

The local cemetery in Saint Louis is also beginning to flood. Most people from the region have at least one relative buried here.

Could the governments stop compounding the issue with less than accurate solutions that end up damaging an area further? Definitely.

The government announced the digging of a four-metre hole in the Langue de Barbarie (‘Tongue of Barbary’), a long stretch of sand that creates a natural barrier between the Atlantic Ocean and the Senegal River. The natural protection had already weakened due to sea level rises.

The dug area was intended to open an unloading channel to facilitate the discharge of the river into the ocean, as a way to contain and counter possible flooding. But the gap has widened, separating the southern end of the peninsula from the land and effectively making it an island. Area scientists were outraged by the amateur nature of the government’s decision, which was taken without doing any impact assessments.

The four-metre (13ft) breach was cut in the peninsula in 2003, but it quickly widened to 800m (2,600ft). As of December 2013, the sea had claimed over 3km (1.9mi) of land, causing the loss of villages. By January this year, the breach had widened to 6km.

That image is from the oldest cemetery in Saint Louis. The flooding has begun to reach the cemetery. No-one knows what the local population will do as more of their ancestors’ bones begin to be raised.

I’m hoping to head south into The Gambia and work on a story about how farming there has been affected by drought.

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