Amna and her home town in Darfur
Ala Kheir, Sudan
Alaeldin Adam (Ala Kheir) is a Sudanese photographer and educator whose work explores memory, displacement, and everyday life in Khartoum and Nyala. Since the outbreak of war in Sudan in 2023, his practice has expanded to document the resulting displacement crisis, combining documentary photography with education to preserve lived experience during conflict. Kheir’s work has been exhibited internationally and he is actively involved in photography education across Africa, including founding The Other Vision and serving as Chair of the World Press Photo Africa Jury.
I met Amna, a seven-year-old Sudanese refugee, on the day she arrived in Adré with her family after spending days walking across villages in Darfur in search of safety in Chad. I spent some time speaking with her about where she came from, trying, even briefly, to shift her thoughts away from the war she had just witnessed. After making several portraits of her, I felt that combining her image with a photograph I had taken in her hometown before the war would create a stronger representation of what home means when it is threatened with disappearance. As someone from Darfur myself, I struggle to find the words to describe what it feels like to realize that I may never see Darfur again because of the war still unfolding there.