This week, African Voices, the Globacom-sponsored magazine programme on CNN International, turns its searchlight on the London-based photographer and multidisciplinary artist, Ejatu Shaw, whose work continues to refract heritage into striking visual poetry.

Born in 1996, Shaw is a graduate of the University of Westminster, where she earned a Master’s degree in Photography Arts in 2020. Yet the true genesis of her craft predates the academy.

It was during a 2013 family sojourn to Sierra Leone that her creative awakening first flickered like light finding its way through a narrow aperture setting her on a path of introspective exploration.

Her oeuvre is a delicate tapestry, interweaving strands of Islamic faith with the vibrant textures of African heritage. Echoes of the great studio photographers of the 1960s and 1970s such as Malick Sidibé, Sory Sanlé, and Omar Yahia Barram resonate subtly within her compositions, like ancestral voices carried on a visual wind.

From these influences, Shaw has cultivated a practice rooted in memory and self-inquiry. Through self-portraiture and conceptually layered projects, she transforms personal recollections into images that speak with both intimacy and universality mirrors in which the past and present quietly converge.