"I'm Not Where I'm Supposed To Be" is an ongoing portrait project covering human displacement in the Sudan, Central African Republic, and Chad.
Despite the enormous physical size of Central and East Africa, overlapping issues and actors have resulted in the forceable movement of millions of people, sometimes for decades. Each person has to flee, ending up in refugee camps, the bush, or the outskirts of cities squatting with extended family members in overextended homes and burdened economies. Paid work is scarce, as is access to food, clean water, sanitation and health care. The result is a holding pattern, a perptual state of non-progress where basic subsistence takes up most of a days work, and the accumulation of wealth, formerly cattle and arable land, is impossible. Social economic systems crumble, and with them gone, expectations for the future disappear.
Christopher was born and raised in upstate New York, and graduated from McGill University (Montreal, Canada) with a degree in cultural anthropology. He started working with a camera during his last semester, and since 2002 has gone on to pursue projects concerning international development and humanitarian aid, religion, sport, and identity. He has focused his work on intertwined conflicts in Central and East Africa, but has visited 25 countries and six continents for different projects. He lives in New York.
