(Something from the archives. This essay was originally published three years ago, and I still love this chance encounter. For those of you new to Sundays with Stella, I hope you enjoy it, too.)
In July 1996, my travel partner Allyson and I met Gorm on a scorching afternoon in Saint-Louis, Senegal. He was sitting with his colleague Mauve at one of the tables on the veranda overlooking the Pont Faidherbe at Hôtel de la Poste. We were wandering aimlessly and happened to walk inside—probably looking lost and confused. He invited us over for a beer. He had just finished working with a local organization as part of his master’s degree program in health services. We told him we were students photographing in the area for a school documentary project. During our conversation, we asked if he could share a few tips, since we were staying for a month and a half in the city.
“You know, there is this American lady who comes by every day around 6:00 p.m. and uses the phone in the lobby,” he began.
He paused to take a sip of his beer.
“I don’t know her at all, but you might want to come by tomorrow and see if she’ll be there. She might be open to showing you around.”
Gorm left for the States the following day. We took his advice and returned to the hotel. Sure enough, Lisa F., a Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Saint-Louis for two years, walked in as scheduled. We waited until she finished her phone call before introducing ourselves. We hit it off right away. She spoke the local language and was able to help us with translations. She gave us tips on how to navigate the city and dished out common-sense advice.
“When there’s no napkin in the restaurant, just slowly wipe your mouth with French bread,” she told us.
It still cracks me up to this day whenever I see Lisa’s posts. We recently reconnected on Facebook during the 2020 lockdowns.
Upon my return to Santa Barbara, I sent Gorm a thank-you note and included two matted Polaroid transfer prints I had taken in Saint-Louis. He was thrilled to receive them. I thought that would be the last I heard from him—but he sent an email four years later, in 2000. By then, I had moved to the Bay Area, while he had relocated to Sydney with his partner. He told me he was in town visiting his parents and brought his mom along for a brief stop at the photo studio I rented in SoMa.
Fast forward to June 2011. I received another email through my website. He was due for a visit to the U.S. and asked if I could commission portraits of his family. I immediately said yes. And what are the odds—his hometown is only seven miles from where I live.
On the day of the shoot, as I drove to his parents’ home, I thought about how remarkable it was that we had met in such a remote part of the world, and that he had continued to stay in touch all these years. We held the portrait session in the backyard, where I met Gorm’s parents, brother, sister-in-law, and two nephews. The youngest refused to participate and would pout and stomp off whenever I raised my camera. Despite this, the rest of the family went with the flow and made the most of it.
That evening, sitting in bed, I found myself marveling at the power of chance encounters—our paths had crossed at a hotel in Senegal, and here I was, more than a decade later, photographing his family.
Over the weekend, I was busy organizing a reunion for the seventeen of us who journeyed to West Africa twenty-seven years ago. While doing so, Gorm crossed my mind. I still haven’t seen him since 2011—time really does fly.
“You must come and visit me in Australia,” he said before we parted ways that day.
He lives a few hours from Sydney. I only had a few days in the city in 2017 and couldn’t make it work.
I reached out to him most recently in 2023, and he wrote: "It was so nice to hear from you again after all these years. The two beautiful images you shot in Senegal are hanging outside my office at home, and I enjoy them every day. Imagine that we would still be connected after so long!"
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