Arrival
September 6 – 30, 2007
Between 2003 and 2004 twelve thousand Somali Bantu were resettled to the United States from refugee camps along the Kenyan–Somali border. Arrival consists of individual portraits of two Bantu families at the Hancock International Airport in Syracuse, New York. The families were met by a small contingent of local Somalis and members of Catholic Charities, one of several organizations in charge of settling the Bantu in Syracuse.
I photographed the family members at their moment of entry into the United States. Dressed with a unique combination of east African cloth, UNHCR issue blankets and generic tennis shoes, each individual stands at a threshold between an unreconciled past and the unrealized prospect of life in the United States. The significance of this passage, deeply imbedded in our national myths and debates on public policy, is no less critical to the formation of individual and family identity. These photographs offer a visual account of origin and lineage, destined to become more opaque and mysterious with each generation.