Richie was the apprentice of Emmanuel Botalatala, the Kinshasa artist known as the Minister of Garbage. I photographed him often since 2016, during a two-week shoot, and have met him again on each return to Kinshasa since. He is 29 now.
I met Richie in 2016, during two weeks in Kinshasa as co-cinematographer on Quentin Noirfalisse’s documentary Le Ministre des Poubelles. The film followed Emmanuel Botalatala, a self-taught artist who builds political sculptures from what the city throws away. Richie was his apprentice. He sorted, cut, assembled, and mostly watched. Our camera was on the Minister. I kept looking at the young man beside him.
He was curious and wanted to help, he drove us all around the city, acting as a fixer. He looked straight back at the lens, a beat longer than most people do.
The workshop never paid much. Over the next ten years I came back to Kinshasa for other films, each time I was happy to see him again. He never left the city. He had children. He went through years without money and drove a moto-taxi through the traffic. Today he works for a pastor who took him under his wing.
All these photographs were taken between 2016 and now. They show the city he was learning to move through with him: night roads, moto-taxis, rail tracks used as footpaths, his family, the river. The Minister stays at the edges, half hidden behind a curtain or still working on his art.
