Rain on Dry Earth: A photo series capturing the women footballers of Cameroon

Football is everywhere in Cameroon – where there’s open space, there’s someone kicking a ball. But for girls, that space is harder to claim. Petrichor Football Association wants to change that. Founded in 2017 in Yaoundé, the grassroots organisation creates access and opportunity for women and girls to develop their skills and compete.

The organisation is named after a word used to describe the smell of rain on dry earth. Its latest campaign takes its name from this. Shot by Benjamin Rasmussen, Rain on Dry Earth is a photo series celebrating the women footballers of Cameroon. “We wanted to portray them as the heroes of their own stories, using photographs to show them as the powerful young women they are,” says Benjamin.

The photographer got involved with Petrichor after reconnecting with its co-founder Paul Dreisbach, who he went to high school with in Manilla. “I grew up in the rural Philippines and have worked in dozens of countries, but there is still a tension that I feel in new places,” says Benjamin. He ended up spending two weeks in Cameroon, and found it was a difficult place to shoot – for both safety and logistical reasons. Travelling wasn’t the easiest; it was either a slow cab through heavy traffic, or a backie on a bumpy motorbike.

The weather was also unpredictable, with sudden storms that would drown his plans to shoot and turn pitches into muddy fields. However, “there is an electricity to the city,” he says. Huge crowds fill the streets, with vendors selling mobile services and football jerseys. “During the two weeks that I stayed there and spent time with the players, coaches and the team from Petrichor, I started to understand the beauty and complexity of Yaounde.”

This energy is palpable in Benjamin’s series, capturing power, movement and joy in both black-and-white and colour. Working on editorial and commercial projects across travel, fashion, and sport, Benjamin’s work revolves around “understanding the visual languages that we use to discuss specific topics, geographies and populations”. With this work, he combines the aesthetics of fashion and sports, while creating a visual world that feels “beautiful and slightly familiar”.

With the recent onslaught of negative news, Benjamin recognises how those in the West can feel disconnected from the broader world. “My hope for Rain on Dry Earth is to remind viewers of how at the macro level, the world may seem distant and unknowable. But as you zoom in on individual communities, you find people like these young women and their coaches and the team at Petrichor; people who are working to improve their lives and their societies.”