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Reath Bol

@_reathbol

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South Sudanese Visual Artist | Documentary Photographer
📍East Africa - Currently in Nairobi, Kenya
📩 [email protected]

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From the "Homes we Carry" project

#monochrome #portraitphotography #artcollaboration #SouthSudan" #blackandwhite #horns #resilience #strength by @_reathbol

From the "Homes We Carry" project

I documented this moment in Juba on Christmas eve, December of 2025. Looking at these children took me back to the evening of December 24th, 2013, when I was playing outside my home in Malakal, south sudan, excited for Christmas Day, not knowing it would be the last evening I would play there normally before the conflict broke out in the early hours of the next morning.

Like my family, their family is from Malakal. They were displaced by the 2013 conflict with their older sibling, who was just a baby at the time, before these children were born. Their older sibling later died as a result of violence—not war—in Juba two years ago. Their mother chose not to say more about his death. They now live as internally displaced people (IDPs).

The white fabric is my wish that they grow up with a peaceful childhood, and that every place they call home is shaped by peace, not conflict. by @_reathbol

[PUBLICATION @techcabal ]

Grateful to have worked alongside my friend @pedro_butros , who beautifully wrote this story for @techcabal , while I had the honour of bringing the visuals to life through my photographs.

Our feature focuses on Shilu-ANA — South Sudan’s first locally built ride-hailing startup — a symbol of innovation, perseverance, and hope for what’s possible in Juba.

Butros captured the spirit of the people behind the app through his writing, while I tried to show that same spirit through the lens — the faces, the roads, and the quiet determination that move this city forward.

I truly appreciate this collaboration with Butros and the opportunity to share a positive story about South Sudan’s growing tech scene.

Credits:

writing: @pedro_butros
Photos: @_reathbol

https://techcabal.com/2025/10/23/ride-hailing-in-south-sudan-shilu-ana/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAafFUXinhPrbj_yYdacem_WPjkVqC4xmIEykbTU3wLxLutukRQ5_CC5iGgnEJw_aem_Y4wnRu-KJ4yjv34yoWJNZw by @_reathbol

What does home mean when the place you once knew as home no longer exists?

For South Sudanese visual artist and documentary photographer Reath Bol, home is not only a house or a country. It is memory, family, culture, language, food, photographs and the people who make us feel recognized.

At ten years old, Reath experienced the violence that reached Malakal in 2013, forcing his family to flee. Years later, returning to find the house where he was born destroyed became a reminder that while places can disappear, the memories attached to them can endure.

Through photography, Reath explores displacement, identity, belonging and the everyday moments that survive alongside loss. His work asks us to look beyond the labels of refugee, returnee or survivor, and instead see people in their full complexity: what they have lost, what they carry, and what they continue to build.

In “Homes We Carry,” Reath reflects on memory, displacement and the search for belonging—and how, sometimes, home is something we carry with us.

Reath Bol | Visual Artist & Documentary Photographer by @_reathbol

From the "Homes We Carry" project

Hussein, 19, is from Nyala, Sudan. Before the war, his life was school, work, family, playing cards with friends and so on. In 2024, as the RSF took control of Nyala and the threat of forced recruitment grew, his family sent him and his older sister to Uganda for safety and a better future. His cousin Hassan had gone before him for the same reason. They later moved to Nairobi in may 2026 after finishing high school, and now they live with their older brother who left Nyala years before the war. They're waiting for the university. But Hussein still misses his family, his grandmother Haboba Sheriffa, her food, his friends, neighbours and Nyala.

He left home behind, but memories keep bringing flowers from its garden.

“If there’s a way I can go back to Nyala today before tomorrow, I can definitely go.” he told me. by @_reathbol

Homes We Carry | Reath Bol (@_reathbol )

Read Issue 3. 📍
(link in bio)

Image credit: Reath Bol

#africanphotography #hummingbirdjournal3 #hummingbirdjournal #litmag #sudan by @_reathbol

In South Sudan, art is not separate from life. It happens inside it, every day.

Walk through the country’s creative scene and you find painting and sculpture shaping memory into form.

Photography sitting somewhere between documentation and imagination, each image asking a question about identity and belonging. Music moving through towns and small communities alike, traditional rhythms mixing with hip-hop, gospel, Afrobeats and reggae, carrying stories of love, struggle and hope that words alone cannot hold.

Theatre brings those stories into real space, through voice and movement. Dance does the same, on stage and in ceremony, telling without speaking. Film is still young here, independent filmmakers building documentary and fiction around youth, displacement and everyday change. Literature and poetry sit quieter, but they hold language and reflection all the same. Fashion, design and traditional craft carry culture into daily life, in fabric, form and material.

At the College of Music, Art and Drama, a new generation is learning across all of these fields at once, still finding direction, still building what does not yet fully exist.

There is no fixed structure to South Sudan’s art world. Exhibition spaces are few. Funding is limited. Many artists work without either. What holds this scene together is not systems. It is people, choosing to keep creating anyway.

That persistence is the story. Not the absence of infrastructure, but the presence of will.

🔄 Share this carousel to your story to amplify South Sudan’s creative movement.

#SouthSudaneseArt #JubaCreatives #EastAfricanArt #ContemporaryAfricanArt 
Which form of art resonated most with you? Tell us in the comments below.

Follow @sidewaysstories for more stories from across Africa and its diaspora, told on their own terms. by @_reathbol

Project Introduction – Homes We Carry…
Shot/sent by @_reathbol
Thank you to @east_afdiaspora for coordinating and bringing more South Sudan 🇸🇸 content

Homes We Carry is an ongoing photographic series that explores what it means to live without a permanent home. Drawing from my own experience of displacement across South Sudan, Sudan, and Kenya, the project reflects on memory, identity, belonging, and the emotional weight of carrying “home” within oneself when home is no longer a fixed place.

Through intimate portraits, personal spaces, and everyday moments, the series documents how displaced people preserve dignity, culture, and hope while rebuilding their lives. Rather than focusing only on loss, Homes We Carry speaks to resilience and the many ways people continue to create a sense of home wherever they find themselves.

What does home mean when you’ve had to leave it behind?
Homes We Carry is a visual exploration of displacement, memory, and belonging. Created across Kenya, the series follows people who continue to carry pieces of home within themselves despite migration, conflict, and uncertainty.
Home is more than a place. It lives in memory, in the objects we keep, in our relationships, and in the hope of beginning again.

Homes We Carry (2025–Ongoing)

Some homes survive only in memory—in the streets we once walked, the people we loved, and the meals that still carry us back. Food has become another way I remember the places I've lost, a taste that keeps home alive even when the landscape has changed.

Homes We Carry is an ongoing photographic journey about displacement, memory, belonging, and the many ways we continue to carry home with us. by @_reathbol

Reath Bol 🇸🇸 (@_reathbol) is a South Sudanese documentary photographer and visual artist whose work explores identity, displacement, memory, belonging and resilience through powerful visual storytelling.

One of his proudest achievements is his ongoing commitment to long-term personal projects exploring displacement and identity, bringing visibility to experiences that are often underrepresented.

Bol combines documentary authenticity with artistic storytelling, creating intimate and reflective images rooted in empathy, human connection and lived experience.

His photographs invite viewers to engage with stories of migration, resilience and humanity beyond the surface.

Discover Bol ⭐ on 54Ruum.com

The #RuumSpotlight is powered by @ruumafrica

#SouthSudan
#Photography
#54Ruum
#TheRuumAfrica by @_reathbol

📍 Saturday, 13 Jun | 7 PM
Join us for an evening with Reath Bol — a photographer based in Nairobi whose work explores identity, displacement, and memory. He'll be sharing a selection from Homes We Carry alongside a conversation about his practice.

RSVP: Link in bio by @_reathbol

Nightshift - Naivasha, Kenya

#documentaryphotography #monochromephotography #nightshift #kenya #africa by @_reathbol