Rooftop Exhibition, Katanga, August 2011.
It has been over a month since I taught the Bayimba photography workshop in Katanga, a local slum neighbourhood in Kampala, Uganda. Aside from successfully completing the workshop despite power outages and the like we achieved several milestones.
Some of the participants narratives have been featured here on Another Africa. Markedly, we exhibited a selection of photographs on a roof top in Katanga and again during the Bayimba Festival to positive reception with another show planned in 2012 at the Musee Des Arts in Nyanza, Rwanda. The participants visual narratives have now also been compiled by myself into little booklets that are available for purchase online. So with those major tasks completed, I find myself with a moment to reflect and look back on what we were able to accomplish.
As the saying goes, in order to know where you are going, you have to know where you came from. Applying this adage first I would like to go back to last year. After the first Bayimba photography workshop in 2010 Arthur C. Kisitu and Irene Sinou, two of the participants, continued working together. They sent me some of the photographs they had taken; I was genuinely impressed by what they had achieved. They had made very intimate portraits, introducing me to people that were living in poor circumstances. But their environment was not what caught my eye, it was their pride and dignity. I felt this went beyond the poverty porn we, in Europe as well as in Africa, see a lot from slums.
Irene and Arthur managed to achieve this by building relationships with and showing commitment to the people they worked with. This made me realize one of the big issues I had with the past workshop; the lack of engagement of the photographers with their subjects. There were numerous reasons such as the focus of most of the participants on familiarising themselves with the technical basics of their camera’s. At the same time their jobs and other parts of their lives were also demanding. It nevertheless made me propose to Arthur and Irene to build for a next workshop based on what they were doing in the slum neighborhood called Katanga. Arthur rented a room there. He saw and understood the daily challenges the residents faced from up close and wanted to use his photography as a means for social change. He accepted my proposal which in turn led to him helping me to organise this year’s workshop. His contacts in Katanga were invaluable for the set up where each participant was to be teamed up with an individual or small group of people, all residents of Katanga. Some of whom you have been able to see and read about such as Helen & Diana the boxers, or Chairman Ssentamu, Ssemakula the football team founder, Sula the garbage collector and John the water fetcher. Arthur and Irene themselves continued working with a group of ladies who sell banana peels as pig food by the side of the road.
One of the last selections of work I would like to introduce is from Bwette Daniel Gilbert. Gilbert, who incidentally was doing the PR for the Bayimba festival is also involved in youth projects. At first he was paired to work with Aisha who was in-charge of making our lunches. We tried to give as much business as possible to the people around us. Gilbert has a good eye, makes good compositions, seems to understand timing. But what amazed me most is that he, without thinking about it, took photographs that were about other images. One of them reminded me of Rodin’s thinker, another of a photo that I am sure I saw of a boy carrying a machine gun. He turned out to be working mostly with Aisha’s sons. He gave his own photography workshop, showing the boys how to frame a picture, and ended up using that as part of his visual strategy.
Gilbert’s photographs bring me back to one of the problems I started out with. The cultural difference with all its references and the connotations that it creates. Gilbert didn’t know Rodin. He just did something intuitively, playing around with the kids and his camera. It is me and the images in my memory that create meaning here. Ugandan/African photographers making images that are meaningful for a Western audience is one thing. Those same photographers improving the documentary representation in their own country is another. The latter unfortunately is not something that a two week photography workshop, led by a cultural outsider can achieve.
Contemplating on the success of the workshop it is clear that it was successful in that it gave two groups of people, photographers, or rather photography enthusiasts and Katanga residents, an enriching experience. The photographers improved their skills, both technically and in terms of visual narration. However Uganda is not the easiest place to become successful as a photographer. Can they build on their experience, grow and earn a living based on photography? In all honesty, there are many challenges to overcome and the type of photography promoted by this workshop is not an easy one to earn money with in Uganda. That said though, the participants did meet some like-minded people, and had special encounters with people living in hard circumstances. It is Arthur’s and my hope that they will not leave it at that, but rather continue to build on the relationships established during our two weeks in Katanga.
We were able to work on advancing Arthur’s goal to use photography to improve conditions for some of the people in Katanga. Although the workshop is finished for this year, we continue to promote the projects and gather proceeds from sales from the images and booklets which are available online. It would be wonderful to see the exhibition shown beyond Rwanda, in Africa and beyond.
Readers interested to buy a photo(s), please email your enquiries. The full set of images can be viewed here and booklets showcasing the visual narratives created by the 2nd Bayimba Photography Workshop are now on sale at Lulu.com. 7 Euro’s from each sale will be contributed to the Katanga fund which has a designated local spokesperson and committee responsible for making the best usage of these funds.
All images courtesy of the respective artists. All rights reserved.
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About
Andrea Stultiens does things with photographs. She makes them, collects them, looks at them, thinks and writes about them, and sometimes she makes the results of this visible to the rest of the world. She is amazed by how we are influenced by our environment. By how we take control of that environment, how we mould a fictional variant of ‘real life’ and remember it with the help of photography.
Athur C. Kisitu (b. Uganda) is a self-taught artist that lives and works in Uganda. His work emphasises story telling through documentary photography and other visual arts as a means to create awareness and solve problems. Past projects include working with street children in Kampala, Uganda, a project that was exhibited at the Uganda German Cultural Society in 2006. In 2010 The Kaddu Wasswa Archive was published, a project that he co-authored and collaborated on with Dutch photographer, Andrea Stultiens. Key topics present in his work deal with HIV, war and poverty as well as the inter-connections between these issues. He is the founder of charitable organisation, SHUGA, Sweet Home Uganda.
Where is Uganda?
arthur
Oct 07, 2011
you have done katanga proud, thanks andrea,,,,,,,reading this story, in perspective ,has reminded me how far we have come,despite the challenges.
Another Africa
Oct 07, 2011
Arthur, through Andrea we have been able to learn about your project and work in Katanga – it is certainly impressive and meaningful. It is very clear to see why Andrea reacted to your’s and Irene’s photograph from 2010. We have been happy to share these stories to Another Africa readers!