The photographer Sarah Stacke decided to start her “D.R.C. Archive Project” while studying photographic representations of the Democratic Republic of the Congo at Duke University. Driven by the belief that a country should not be defined by its conflict, Stacke traveled to the D.R.C. to seek out local photographers, and began building an online visual resource that would reveal the richness and complexity of its culture.
Among her finds was the work of the photographer Lema Mpeve Mervil, who gave Stacke access to his large collection of portraits. “These images revealed something incredibly valuable about the time and place they were taken, and they were just really fun to look at,” Stacke told me. One of her favorites shows a young man walking down an avenue with a rose in his hand. “People need to do that more often,” she said.
