I made this picture in rural Guinea for the AP in 1999 during the funeral of Amadou Diallo, a 23-year-old Guinean immigrant to the USA who was shot and killed in a hail of 41 bullets fired by four New York City Police Department plain-clothed officers in the Bronx. Diallo was innocent. All four police were acquitted. I was based in Côte d'Ivoire then. I'd been living all around Africa since graduating. I knew very little about what was happening in my native USA. I had no reliable internet or knew much of what was happening in the USA. I flew to Conakry and drove to Diallo's village the day Al Sharpton arrived. I remember this all strangely. My perspective on the USA, back then, was similar to that of the rural Africans around me. I imagined New York as a far away place of promise. I hadn't really thought of it otherwise until this funeral. Photo by @dguttenfelder by everydayusa

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