UBUCIKO AROUND THE GLOBE
There’s art everywhere. Sometimes you just have to go looking for it. And sometimes, you just have to look up.
I’ve always believed there’s an art to everything and art in everything.
Sometimes it’s obvious. Sometimes it’s hidden in the details. And sometimes we miss it completely because we’re moving too fast, looking down, or simply not paying attention.
Look up. Look around. Pay attention.
You might catch the moon in the middle of the day. A bird you’ve never seen before. The details at the top of a building everyone walks beneath. But art isn't only above us. It’s in the food someone prepares, the way a woman ties her headwrap, the carvings on an old door, the hands of an elder making something the way they were taught, the rhythm of a market, a ritual, a conversation, or something happening on the side of the road.
That's what I travel for.
Ubuciko means “art/creativity” in isiZulu, and Ubuciko Around the Globe is what happens when I take that way of seeing with me around the world.
I’m a photographer, artist and 49-year-old empty nester in a season of my life where I finally have the freedom to ask myself: Where do I want to go next? What do I want to see? What do I want to create?
So I’m going.
I’ve already traveled and photographed in places including Kenya, South Africa and Ethiopia, but this journey is becoming something bigger. I’m documenting what happens when you allow yourself to explore the world—and yourself—without believing adventure, curiosity or reinvention has an expiration date.
And I'm interested in much more than the places everybody tells you you're supposed to see.
I want the art. The food. The architecture. The rituals. The people. The conversations. The markets. The music. The landscape. The things happening above me and the things happening right in front of me. And probably the place somebody local tells me I need to go that wasn't on my itinerary.
Because some of the best parts of traveling happen between the itinerary.
As a photographer, of course I want the incredible photograph. But I also want to know the story around it—what happened before I lifted the camera and what somebody tells me after I put it down.
I don't want to arrive already knowing the story I'm going to tell. I want each place to tell me what the story is.
That’s Ubuciko Around the Globe.
Traveling. Creating. Paying attention. Finding the art that was already there.
And remembering to LOOK UP.
COME WITH ME
Ubuciko Around the Globe continues on YouTube, where I’m documenting the journey through photography, conversations, food, culture, art and whatever else I discover along the way.
I don’t just want to show you where I went. I want you to feel like you came with me.