Ebifananyi #5

Picha V: Uhuru - Minor accidents - Eng. M.W. Wambwa

Andrea Stultiens

18.50

softcover10.5 x 14.5English
ISBN 97890821822172016

Uhuru is the Swahili word for independence. The protectorate Uganda gained its independence from the British Empire in 1962. The book presents a selection of colour slides made by ENG. M.W. Wambwa and fragments from his autobiography. Engineer Wambwa was born and raised in a rural community in Eastern Uganda. His mother made every effort possible to educate him. He eventually became one of the first western trained civil engineers in Uganda. Both Eng. Wambwa’s pictures as well as the selected text fragments are optimistic about the developments of the country and its newly gained political independence, until a dark day late May 1966. Just before Stultiens and Wambwa met, Wambwa burned all of his negatives. The slides that survived, formed inspiration for three contemporary photographers: Canon Griffin (UG), Luuk van den Berg (NL) and Elsadig Mohamed. They responded on Stultiens’ invitation, in their own way, to the historical pictures.

  • Andrea Stultiens is not completely at ease with calling herself a photographer, or an artist. Instead she describes herself as someone doing things with photographs. She makes them, collects them, looks at them, thinks and writes about them. Sometimes she makes the results of this visible for the rest of the world online, in books or in exhibitions. All of this is aimed at telling relevant stories about the way we relate to others and how we deal with what we consider to be our own culture.

    Next to the mostly self-initiated projects Stultiens also teaches at the BFA program of Academy Minerva in Groningen, where she is also the head of the research group PRICCAPractice that investigates the use of photographs in artistic practices. The Ebifananyi book series and the exhibitions connected to it is the artistic output of her practice based research at PhDArts / Leiden University.

  • Photography:Andrea Stultiens
    Design:Andrea Stultiens
    Other people:Eng. M.W. Wambwa, Elsadig Mohamed, Luuk van den Berg, Rumanzi Canon
  • Printing:Drukkerij Tienkamp
    Edition:1st
    Publisher(s):Paradox, HIPUganda