Not my domain: Power dynamics on a remote Ghanian beach

The story behind this image brought up so many questions for me on travel, ethics, and power.

This photo was taken on a beach in Ghana, three hours west of the capital, Accra. I had the weekend to myself and had got more confident on solo travel in the last couple of years. I took an Uber from the four star hotel to the bustling market where my driver, Prince, showed me where to get a TroTro down the coast. TroTros are mini vans that act as buses serving small towns and villages along the capillary network of roads out of the capital.

The ride in the TroTro was pleasant, I was sat next to a lovely woman and her daughter, she gave me some sweets, I gave her a can of Malt drink in return. After a few hours of bouncing and creaking along dirt roads we got to my stop where I got in a taxi with a few other people for the last stretch. The taxi had no windows or interior soft furnishing, we rumbled along in this skeleton of a vehicle.

At my destination I met my host and immediately wanted to go home, as he walked up between the houses I saw him shout angrily at some children. I felt deeply uncomfortable in his presence for the day and night I was there. I acutely felt my solo, female status, frustrated, scared and slightly angry that my femaleness makes life so difficult sometimes.

I went for a walk on the beach to get some time to myself. Powerful brown waves dumped hard on the shore and red crabs scuttled in and out of their holes in the sand. Fishing boats were scattered across the beach, some hewn out a single enormous tree that had been floated down the river from the rainforest in land.

While wandering the beach I came across some fishermen fixing their nets. One asked me for money, I rooted around in my pockets but only had a small amount of change on me, enough to buy a bottle of coke or two. I gave him the money then asked if I could take a photo of him. He agreed. The trade was some change in my pocket for a photo. While taking the photo I became painfully aware that I was pointing a camera worth about six months of his salary at him, an uncomfortable thought. I don’t think he was having the same thought. He looked at me, at the camera, with an expression of total power.

I’d left the hut for a walk to get away from the uncomfortable power dynamic with the host, now I was in the midst of another uncomfortable dynamic but one that was less clear. I felt I was vulnerable on that beach but do I really have a right to feel safe regardless of where I go or what I do? In an ideal world yes of course, but this was not my domain. The fisherman sat mending his net in front of me could no less walk in to the hotel I was staying at in the capital, a hotel in his own country, than he could get on a plane and come and take a photo of me working in my office. But that thought was irrelevant. This was his domain.

I thought that I was being respectful in considering the power dynamic based on money and privilege but what it actually did was to create a distorted lens of white guilt and misplaced pity. I love this photo because of the pride and strength in his gaze, in his whole body. It is undeniable. Although my expensive camera and even presence on that beach was a stark visual representation of systemic inequality, the power was very much with him in the moment we shared on that remote beach in Ghana.