Meet Noah Tjijenda: navigating race, representation, and identity

As part of Black History Month this year, we selected 4 of our talented graduates to feature their work as part of the UAL campaign.

Noah Tjijenda tells us about the importance of telling stories people can identify with and the beauty of capturing intimate moments.

Hi Noah! Please can you introduce yourself in your own words?

Hey there, my name is Noah Tjijenda. I graduated from the BA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography back in 2022. With my work I focus on issues around race, representation, and identity, both through photography and research.

Why do you make art? 

I think my art and the projects I work on come with motivation from my youth. Growing up as a mixed-child in Germany I know how it feels to be made to feel different. And the damage that can cause. With my work I intend to break walls that have been built with the intent of separating us from each other. I believe that understanding each other's experiences and perspectives can do so much to make our world a better one.

What is your work about, and what messages do you convey through it?

'Namibia: Stories from the Diaspora' follows two couples living in Germany and my Auntie in London, who have been living in Europe for a long time. Building a new life here - far from home. Coming with many challenges, but also joyful moments. More people than ever have left their home countries for various reasons. I wish that people look at my work and realise that even though we may have taken different paths, we are not so different. Giving people stories they can feel and identify with.

What are your primary inspirations?

My primary inspiration is to understand the world around me and myself more. Using my work to make dense and heavy topics more digestible by an audience. I work a lot with archives and real stories, which are not necessarily accessible by others.

Changing that motivates me greatly and keeps inspiring new projects and ideas.

What piece of yours stands out the most to you? Why?

The photo I took of my father and step-mother stands out the most to me, and is definitely one of my favourite photos of the project - if not my portfolio. Capturing such intimate moments, while working with my participants is special to me. Especially, when the moment feels like there was no camera present. Moments like these are truly special and warm my heart when looking back at them.

What have you been doing since graduating, and what's next?

Since March I have been working as a Researcher & Account Manager for ProQuest (whose products I actually used quite a bit for my dissertation), focusing on historical periodicals and figuring out the structures and stories behind these periodicals to clear rights.

Besides that I am currently working on a new project “Echoes of History: Preserving Namibia’s Cultural Heritage”, for which I have been awarded with the Mead Fellowship. This project brings together different perspectives considering the history of the Herero’s. Through both working with archives and interviewing the older generation of Herero’s. For which I will be visiting Namibia in January, and currently visiting archives in Berlin and Oxford in preparation.

You’ve been selected as part of the Black History Month campaign for UAL - what does the month mean to you?

I am incredibly grateful for having been selected and for my project to be seen by a wider audience as a result. Though I always get conflicted when Black History Month comes around, as I think it should be something we consider more often than just in October each year.