The boy from Ada Foah who became a witness.

My grandmother — who could not read but could name every fish in the Volta — taught me that the world is held together by what we choose to remember. She kept three cowries in a small tin. They were her ancestors. They were her calendar. They were her camera, long before mine.

When I was twelve, a neighbour returned from Accra with a broken Yashica. Six exposures left on the roll. One survived. It was of my grandmother at the doorway. She was laughing. I did not know yet that I had just become a different kind of person.

The years that followed were not gentle. I lost siblings. I lost the family house. I worked the docks at Tema. I sold yams. I taught a small night class for fisherman's children. And through every season, the camera stayed in my hand — a kind of small, patient god.

Photography became purpose the day I realised it was not enough to make beautiful images of poor people. The photograph had to do something. It had to feed. It had to school. It had to dignify. That was the birth of Eyes of Hope Foundation.

Today, my work moves between Ada and Accra, between gallery walls in Brooklyn and the kitchens of women I photographed twenty years ago. I do not separate them. They are the same room.