Ndini (This is me) is a series of photographs and interviews with local residents by Gravesend-based writer and photographer Mbeke Waseme. Mbeke’s series focuses on people who moved to the area over the last four decades, from places such as from Sierra Leone, Germany, London, Zambia and India. The series captures their experience of laying roots down – sharing their earliest memories, favourite local places and tips about making Northfleet home.
See all Mbeke’s portraits and read the interviews here.
Ndini (This Is Me) is part of Ebbsfleet Citizen Archive, a community-led project capturing and preserving the varied stories and histories of the people and places of Ebbsfleet, Greenhithe, Swanscombe, and Northfleet, inviting local people to work with artists, historians and fellow residents, to explore the area’s unique historic and contemporary identity through objects, sounds, videos and photographs, collected by and from residents past, present and future.
Ebbsfleet Citizen Archive is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund and supported using public funding by Arts Council England. With additional support from Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, Gravesham Libraries, Dartford Museum and Libraries, and Kent Archives.
All the materials gathered through the project can be now be accessed via ebbsfleetcitizenarchive.org, where you can also upload your own contributions.
Mbeke is an accomplished international writer and photographer, based in Gravesend.
Her body of work boasts articles and photographs featured in distinguished publications such as Diversity Business Promotes, Turning Point Magazine, and Black Ballad.
She has held solo exhibitions in both London and Nottingham, featured work in the Leeds Print It! exhibition and the Storytellers Exhibition in Canterbury. Her photography work has garnered awards in Iran and London.
In the 1990s, Mbeke played an integral role in shaping two influential community publications, devoting over five years of her career to African Business and Culture Magazine (now Jamaica Life magazine) and The Alarm Magazine.
Find out more via her website.