The Assignment: Photograph 3 separate "relationships" and edit down to about 30 images. For the first set, I met with Mama Banda, a very popular teacher at the International School of Tanganyika, and she invited me into her class to photograph her relationship with very small group of Swahili students. While the pictures from this shoot don't really jump off the page, they really do reflect her relationship with her students who describe her as ..."a mother figure"..."tough"... "disciplinarian"... "a teacher that will never let us slack off but will also never let us fail". 

The second set in the 'relationship' theme focused on Steve, Crissy and Nelson Loschi. After a year of dealing with paperwork and many highs and lows, the Loschi's finally received their adopted son Nelson. The 'handover' occurred the day Nelson Mandela passed away and in a fitting way, this baby is about the most thoughtful, perceptive and joyful child I've ever seen. This family was meant to be and I felt that the pictures show the warmth that is felt in their house. On a side note, I was there for about an hour with Steve before Crissy arrived from work so there are more pictures of him and Nelson. 

The final set of images is a bit of a stretch but I ran short on time because my most intense photography gig of the year happened this weekend: Sauti za Busara. I was also commissioned to photograph one of the bands and have been editing like crazy to get them the pictures on time. While photographing them on stage and in a boat in the Indian Ocean, it became very clear that this 15 member group from different African countries did not all know each other very well and couldn't speak each others languages which fit our relationship theme in a strange kind of way so I chose to select the images that tells this story.