Sianeh A. Kpukuyou’s sun-kissed portfolio celebrates “Dark skin and African stories”

“It brings me the purest form of joy to be able to present Dark skin and African stories to the media in the most beautiful, creative and empowering way that I know,” Sianeh A. Kpukuyou tells It’s Nice That. Always avoiding the use of studio lights on shoots, she has become fascinated by the myriad ways that the “sun kisses melanin”. The warm golden quality that suffuses her work often leads people to ask how she colour grades her images. Sianeh’s secret is careful observation: “I pay keen attention to dark-skin people when in the sun and try to memorise what I saw and how I can recreate it.”

Sianeh was born in Côte d’Ivoire, raised in Liberia and America and now has made her home in Accra, Ghana. “I truly believe this city has chipped me into the woman I am”, she says. The city life and the stories of people, families and communities that she comes across are often the focus of her photographs. Her portfolio is filled with serendipitous moments of joy – a group of boys playing in the sea or a musician singing at the top of his lungs. But she also has a knack for elevating the everyday transactions of the city into impactful moments worth documenting and contemplating. Her image Trotro memorialises a quiet and fleeting transaction between women. Bathed in the dying light of the early evening, one woman leans out towards the other from the window of a minibus, carefully inspecting some fruit to enjoy on her onward journey.

When it comes to telling these stories, Sianeh is clear about one thing: “I don’t want to re-write any one story.” She avoids spinning her own narrative around the people she photographs and aims to show the viewer how it “truly” is. “These are not just pretty pictures”, says the photographer, who goes by the moniker Askphotos on Instagram. “Whoever I capture should stand up for themselves and tell their stories through my pictures, loud and proud.” So her creative practice has become a way of making connections with people and a process of “learning, relearning and unlearning about African culture”.

Her sun-kissed portfolio is drawn together by the overarching aim to celebrate the beauty of “Dark skin”. Speaking about a recent series Young Nubian Queens, Sianeh highlights the importance of fostering empowerment from a young age. “Telling your kids they are too dark or their nose is too big etc., that is literally the beginning of that child’s self-hatred.” With her two younger siblings and three younger cousins in mind (“who I would literally give the world to if I could”), this series became a way of raising conversations about the importance of instilling self-love in children. The project tells its viewers to treat their young ones “like Queens and kings today, and tomorrow they will see themselves as such and will be treated as such by their peers and others.”