93. SEAN KERNAN STUDIOS
Photographer Sean Kernan’s Sudanese portraits grew out of a failed project. After arriving in Egypt, he discovered that the permission he’d secured to shoot in a museum had fallen through. Luckily, the photographer quickly formulated a Plan B. A contact at a Cairo gallery introduced Kernan to a makeshift community center for Sudanese refugees, and Kernan immediately knew he wanted to photograph the shy patrons.

One of the project’s main goals was to get past the cliché of the refugee—images of people in war-torn countries with guns and army trucks—to see what humanity was expressed in the face when the disaster was not shown. Most portraits, Kernan says, try to bridge the gulf between the viewer and subject. But in this project, he believes the images are more like walking up to the gulf and looking across it. “I learned how hard people’s lives are,” he says. “It puts things in perspective.”

Since there was no space to set up lighting or equipment, he shot his subjects next to a doorway in natural light. The photographer spent anywhere from 3 to 20 minutes with each person, and the language barrier prevented him from giving much direction. “Everything leading up to this project went wrong, and it still came out better than most things I’ve ever done,” Kernan says. He believes the obstacles helped wake him and be more present.
Michelle Taute