The Sarr Collection

Untitled (Prologue) belongs to The Stranger’s Notebook, Dawit L. Petros’s ambitious project on migration, displacement, and the complexities of movement within and from Africa.

Drawing on Albert Camus, Georg Simmel’s writing on the stranger, and the journeys of the early Abyssinian traveler Fesseha Giorgis, Petros traced a research route from Nigeria along the West African coast to Morocco and into Europe, producing a body of work that challenges inherited narratives of geography, belonging, and identity while centering African perspectives on mobility.

What drew the Collection to this photograph is its composition and emotional resonance. It speaks to a defining reality of our time: the willingness of individuals to risk everything in pursuit of opportunity, dignity, and a better future for those they love. A contemporary migration story becomes a universal reflection on hope, sacrifice, and resilience.

Born in Eritrea, Petros is internationally recognized for a research-driven practice spanning photography, film, installation, and archival inquiry. Winner of the 2025 Scotiabank Photography Award, he has exhibited at Tate Modern, the Bamako Encounters African Photography Biennale, and leading institutions across North America, Europe, and Africa, with work held in significant collections including The Walther Collection.
Untitled (Prologue) reminds us that behind every migration story lies a profoundly human one, shaped by hope, sacrifice, resilience, and love.

The Work
Dawit L. Petros
Untitled (Prologue), 2016
Archival pigment print
29 9/10 × 36 1/5 in (76 × 92 cm)
Edition of 3

Angèle Etoundi Essamba (b. 1962, Douala, Cameroon) is one of the leading figures in contemporary African photography. Based in Amsterdam, her work explores Black femininity, identity, spirituality, and cultural memory through powerful black-and-white portraiture.

Over a career spanning more than four decades, Essamba has developed a distinctive visual language centered on gesture, texture, and the sculptural presence of the body. Her photographs challenge historical representations of African women while affirming dignity, strength, sensuality, and self-possession.

Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, Dak’Art, and the Havana Biennial, and is held in major institutional collections including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.

Germane Barnes (b. 1982, Chicago) .barnes is an American architect, designer, and researcher whose work explores the relationship between architecture, identity, memory, and Black domestic life.

Raised in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, Barnes attended Walter Payton College Preparatory High School before earning a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 2008 and a Master of Architecture from Woodbury University in 2012. At Woodbury, he received the Thesis Prize for Symbiotic Territories: Architectural Investigations of Race, Identity, and Community.

He is the founder of Studio Barnes and director of the Community Housing Identity Lab at the University of Miami School of Architecture. Working across architecture, furniture, installation, and research, Barnes examines how space can preserve cultural histories while reimagining the future of Black life and community.

Barnes is the recipient of the Harvard GSD Wheelwright Prize, the Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Academy in Rome, the Architectural League Prize, and a United States Artists Fellowship.

His work is held in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and has been exhibited internationally at institutions including MoMA, SFMOMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

© Germane Barnes

Germane Barnes .barnes

Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears the Crown (10), 2022
Metal, rope, wood, putty
© Germane Barnes

Germane Barnes builds spaces that remember.

Born and raised in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood on the city’s far west side, Barnes is an architect, designer, and researcher whose work examines how design carries cultural memory and how Black life shapes, and is shaped by, the architecture around it.

He attended Walter Payton College Preparatory High School and earned a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 2008, followed by a Master of Architecture from Woodbury University in 2012, where he received the Thesis Prize for Symbiotic Territories: Architectural Investigations of Race, Identity, and Community.

Barnes founded Studio Barnes and directs the Community Housing Identity Lab at the University of Miami School of Architecture. Working across furniture, installation, and spatial research, his practice bridges architecture, sculpture, and social history with remarkable clarity and sensitivity.

That commitment runs through one of his most significant commissions to date: leading the architectural and curatorial vision for the transformation of Emmett Till’s childhood home in Chicago into the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley House Museum, where his work shapes the furnishing, signage, programming, and sustainability of the building.

Barnes is the recipient of the Wheelwright Prize from Harvard GSD, the Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Academy in Rome, the Architectural League Prize, and a United States Artists Fellowship. His work is held in major public collections, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and has been exhibited at MoMA, SFMOMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

We are proud to live with one of his chairs in the : a work that holds sculpture, architecture, and memory within the same frame.


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