Jason Florio is a NYC based photographer and writer from London. He has been working as a freelance photojournalist around the globe for almost two decades.  Along with his wife, photography producer and writer, Helen Jones-Florio, he spent the last three months of 2009 making a 930 km expedition by foot of The Gambia (West Africa) to produce a series of portraits of African chiefs. The Gambia has been a place Florio regularly returns to. For the past fourteen years he has made yearly trips there to work on a long-term project of the people living in and around a sacred forest called Makasutu.

These are some of his portraits of chiefs and elders made while on a 930km circumnavigation by foot of The Gambia.

/all images © Jason Florio/

For more on Florio and his work, visit his official website.