Sahara Borja was born in Toronto, Canada. She spent the first three years of her life in Cali, Colombia with her father’s side of the family during what she calls the “Borja Golden Age.” She left shortly thereafter and spent most of her childhood in San Francisco and the Central Valley. She studied film theory at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, and later graduated from the International Center of Photography, NYC, in 2009. She works full time at an online magazine as a contributing Editor, and as a contributing Writer to Dossier and Line-A Journals. She currently lives in NYC.
Acabou Chorare
From 2011 to the present I’ve been working on a collection of images that attempts to see myself as one entity, not this disparate vessel composed of “me” and “my body.” I am using the camera in an honest attempt to see myself, because i have not been able to, clearly, for most of my adolescence through to adulthood. I don’t know why, and I am trying to figure it out, in part because I have always been able to see others so much better than I can myself. Supposedly the camera doesn’t lie – but the photographic process, one replete with omissions and selections of every kind, sure can. I have tried to see every part of myself, from toe to tip of curl and everything in between. I am prodding myself, contorting myself, decorating myself, stripping myself, compartmentalizing myself, etc., it seems, for an answer. There may not be one. This could be it – ‘na mas. I have no ‘hope’ for what I want to see. I do not want to place judgement on my flesh nor do I want it to be ‘about’ flesh nor can I ignore it, this flesh. The title, Acabou Chorare, was taken from a Brazilian record by Novos Baianos that came out in the early 70s. It translates roughly to ‘No More Crying.’ And in fact, I think there really is nothing to cry about, and I am fucking elated about that.
For more information, please visit her website.