A photographer uncovers the everyday beauty of East Africa
- Text by Cian Traynor
- Photography by Roland Brockmann
When Roland Brockmann first took up photography, back in the era of punk and new wave, he’d take black-and-white portraits inspired by Diane Arbus and process them in his own small lab.
It felt like he was onto something… except for one small problem.
“I was too shy to approach strangers,” the 57-year-old say now. “So that was a bad fit. But, to be honest, in those days I was probably more interested in living the life of a ‘photographer’ than serious taking pictures.”
Instead Roland studied sociology and left Hamburg for Berlin to pursue journalism in the 1990s. He soon had the chance to travel with photographers around the world, researching and reporting on Congo’s gold mines, pirates in Brazil or contortionists in Mongolia.
“That was a good education,” says Roland, “because aside from doing my own work, I watched my colleagues taking pictures – always a little jealous that I was just the writer.”
Over time, as publications cut their budgets, Roland got the chance to take photos of his own – often on assignment from NGOs, documenting issues like the distribution of mosquito nets in Liberia. He found himself taking “the usual charity photos” along the way, but something didn’t feel right.
There was a world of colour and personality in front of him: quiet vignettes that were all dignity and no drama.
“But that was not what the NGOs wanted, of course,” says Roland. “In order to earn money, I had to capture the misery of the world. Most of the time this brought me to refugee camps in Southern Sudan or drought areas of the Sahel region…
“Personally, I always knew that Africa is much more than what the typically European view of misery and exoticism implies.”
Having spent some time living in Kenya and Tanzania, Roland felt the pull of an idea: to give ordinary Africans a face and let them tell their story in their own voice.
At first, the photographer explains, he didn’t know what to expect. “Would people have anything to say at all? And would they tell me, a stranger?”
But as Roland and a friend began travelling through the Kenyan Highlands, backpacking their way across rolling green hills in minibuses (Matatu) or on foot, he found that being the only Mzungu (white man) around meant that characters came straight to him – armed with stories of success and failure, love and separation, worries and passions.
“It was a wonderful experience: not having to search for something, but instead meeting the present,” he says now. “By getting involved with the others, I was able to let go of myself.”
With the help of a translator, and some tea-making supplies for home visits, Roland spent time with everyone from a banana beer brewer to a bone carver, an octopus catcher to a coffin maker.
Picking a favourite story would be impossible, he says, but the overall experienced confirmed his instinct.
“Africa is neither a dark continent nor a exotic paradise under palm trees,” he says. “I hope my book gives a true picture of a normality that the West isn’t even aware of. At the same time, the book intends to emphasise the individuality of people by focusing on them and not on the continent.”
Check out Real People of East Africa by Roland Brockmann.
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