Documentary and portrait photographer — Dakar, New York, and long assignments in between
I photograph people where they live and work, usually over weeks rather than hours. My long-form documentary work has run in magazines and hung in three gallery shows, and the portrait commissions pay for the months when a story is not finished. I shoot mostly on medium format and available light. I do not light a room I have not spent time in, and I do not photograph anyone I have not talked to first — which is slower and is the entire method. The pictures people remember from my work are almost never the first day. I teach one workshop a year in Dakar, ten people, and I sell prints from the archive because the negatives should not only live in a box.
Amara came back from Saint-Louis with a story that was not the one we commissioned and was obviously the better one. We ran twenty-two pages. She had spent five of the seven weeks not photographing.
Hélène Marchand
Photo editor, international magazine
Times shown in Africa/Dakar (GMT).
Contact
A message here goes to Amara Diallo — no account, no newsletter, no middleman.
Amara DialloDocumentary and portrait photographer — Dakar, New York, and long assignments in betweenOr write directly [email protected]