Black Mango Photography

Ma'atSankofa
Black Mango Photography


One of the rarest gifts is the ability to see in 360 degrees of Africanity and then to photograph what is seen. Ma’atSankofa is a seer, a photographer of that rare gift of sight that includes insight and perspective and when she sets her eyes on something, deeply African, she is able to reveal the very soul of that object or phenomenon in her work.

What impresses the viewer of her images is the intelligence and understanding that she brings to the subject. She is an African woman, birthed in England, to a father birthed in Jamaica and a mother birthed in Barbados. It is not so much that she is a product of a real multidimensionality that gives her work depth, but the fact that she has never abandoned her love for humanity. There is a riveting aspect to the images that one meets when viewing these photographs. Are they the reflections of the photographer’s mind as poet, as lyricist, as essayist, or are they just the realities that are found in the ordinary lives of people of African descent anywhere on the globe?

There is migration in these photographs because the artist has travelled both in terms of physical space and mental space in order to bring us into her vision. We are there, too as the young people say, clocking her as she moves in and out of the manifold experiences of each community she photographs. Who is this prophet with pictures, this energetic gatherer of the moment that we honour as special? She is a magician, holding in her hands a camera that brings to life all that is dear to us.
A brilliant photographer.


Molefi Kente Asante
Author, Rhetoric, Race and Identity: The Architecton of Soul