Photography::Art Imitating Life

I love the Nairobi Gallery, one of Nairobi’s unknown treasures which, paradoxically, is adjacent to the city’s main artery, Uhuru Highway. Not only is it a quiet, still oasis sitting in the hustle and bustle of the Central Business District, it also usually has permanent exhibitions (1 year+), unlike most artistic spaces in Nairobi. This means you can comfortably procrastinate as you put the blame on finding a parking space, or dip in as often as you please and notice something you hadn’t on your last visit, for the almost free charge of 100 KeS (approximately £0.80 and $1.30 USD) per visit, for Kenyan residents or 500 Kes for non-residents.

The current exhibition, Piga Picha [Translates to Take a Photo], is a journey from the archives to the present day of portraiture in Nairobi over a century, as Nairobians want to be seen, taken by Kenyans. It features photos taken in the inimitable Ramogi and Studio One photo studios that unfortunately do not have the place they did with the advent of digital photography, as well as street photographers who are reliably positioned in the limited public spaces Nairobi has to offer. The story of photography and its societal impact is eloquently told by academics and writers. But it was the simple words of Rasna Warah, writer & daughter of one of Kenya’s pioneering photographers and proprietor of Studio One, Kulwant Singh Warah, that for me, captured the essence of the exhibition:

Like scented love letters, studio portraits are becoming a forgotten art form.

As a side note: a short personal account by Rasna Warah with some photos taken by her dad, Painting With Light: Capturing The Faces of Post-Independent Kenya is featured in the Generation Kenya.

Given the timeline, which depicts the transition from black & white to colour photography as well as documenting the fleeting trends in studio and street photography, not only fashionable attire but also what pose or background defined a cool picture back then, some of the old black & white photos are reminiscent of Malick Sidibé’s kitsch, retro-cool studio photographs, while other more recent colour photographs are tacky, for want of a better word.

What I found to be really funny was after sniggering and smiling at photos taken in Uhuru Park, right across the road from the gallery, depiciting poses such as the illusion of resting a foot on Nairobi’s iconic landmark, the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, a friend and I walked over to check out the action in the park on a bustling sunny, Sunday afternoon and photographers with analogue cameras, expertly hung around their necks, had on display exactly the same style of photos that we had seen in the exhibition. Only the faces were different.

A number of months later, as I conducted some business nearby the Nairobi Gallery and was urgently in need of passport-size photographs, I had them done by a photographer literally next to the gallery (4 photos for a bargain of 200 Kes, which is < £2 or $3 USD). I tried hard to keep a straight face to have my photo taken as I pondered on the curious juxtaposition.

Piga Picha closes on 24th July, 2010.