I came across this article entitled "The Born Identity," featured in this month's Arise, an African international style publication. What drew me to the article were the pictures, photographed by Liz Johnson-Artur in black and white, depicting a growing community in Russia self-identifying as Afro-Russians. Their bronzed skin amidst an imposing Slavic landscape, which to me always seemed to be synonymous with pale skin and rosy cheeks, similar to the miniature Russian Dolls I played with as a child, proved to be such a powerful image of a world that is continuously integrating and colliding. However, the represented image of the beautiful collision between two different cultures holds a deeper, and at times, painful truth of what it means to be means to be Black and Russian in Russia. A target of hate crimes for a skinhead, an exotic being to a lover, a native stranger in a familiar land...

These are the images from a story that is as beautiful and perplexing as its individuals.

-Sophia