Moutoussamy-Ashe traveled to Johannesburg in 1977 to shoot stills for a documentary, but she also took the opportunity to make her own photographs while there. She later recalled: “I doubt I would have known much about life in South Africa and its apartheid system if I had not been informed by the powerful images in Ernest Cole’s book. In spite of my growing up on the South Side of Chicago while segregation was being enforced in much of the country, it was shocking and incomprehensible that human beings were so utterly denigrated, stripped of basic human rights and dignity. . . . Those images stayed with me forever and encouraged me in my personal exploration of how photographs can tell stories.”
Gallery label from 2023