Living With Nature: A Journey into Daily Life in Sao Tome and Principe

In a series of photographs, Kwame Sousa documents the lives of the inhabitants of São Tomé and Príncipe. The essay is at once an investigation into his home country and a search for identity. Read on to experience Kwame's photographic story.

Kwame explains this photograph as an attempt to capture 'The feeling of carrying something that belongs to you. something productive, the result of something in which you produced the magic of hard work. The passion for the brute and brutal at the same time.'

In this image, Kwame has captured how many people in São Tomé and Príncipe live directly off the land. As he explains, ''I want to show the daily life here that my intention in this photograph was almost to embalm the moment.''

In this photograph, Kwame wanted to capture not only how fishing forms part of daily life but also how children actively take part on providing for their families. As Kwame notes, ''In Africa it is like this for a son to work to help his mother at home.

This photograph shows coffee beans in the process of decay. For Kwame the rich tones resulting from this process create beauty. As he notes, ''In Africa, everything is beautiful even the decomposition of forms. Holding it in your hands is like briefly holding the world.''

The final, and lead, work in the series is made up of green berries held in a man's blue shirt. As he neared the end of his journey, Kwame realized that ''When you live on a tropical island, it's almost impossible for these colours not to become part of you''