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Kenya: Blood Pictures
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The East African (Nairobi)
COLUMN
12 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
John Kariuki
Nairobi
A CHARRED HUMAN BODY resembling a log salvaged from a fire lies outside a burnt out house. Elsewhere, a young man holds aloft a huge building stone just about to drop it onto the head of a man lying beaten on the ground.
There is also the image of a frightened driver trapped inside a truck with a burning tyre on its roof ... one can only imagine the ending.
These are some of the images at the ongoing photo exhibition at Nairobi's Godown arts centre by several photojournalists who covered the post election violence. The exhibitors are Tom Otieno, Arno Kopecky, Thomas Mukaya, Yasuyushi Chiba and Georgina Goodwin.
They are haunting and nauseating but they still impart the feeling that eventually the truth about the mayhem following last year's elections can now be seen.
"I have had people break down in tears here because of the images on display," says Ellis Otieno, the programme officer at the Godown, who also helped co-ordinate the exhibition.
But he hastens to add that the photos on display are only the milder of the images the photographers presented - others were too gruesome to be displayed.
This is not entertainment in the real sense of the word but rather documentation of what happened, a graphic audit of barbarism finding a vent through political instigation.
But even in its censored form, the exhibition lends credence to the notion that in a world of increasing barbarism, reality is much more shocking than fiction for until it happened, nobody could have imagined seeing the kind of scenes captured in the exhibition.
The experience of taking such gruesome material is described by Ramadhan Khamis, a photojournalist who also covered the chaos and describes the hostility they faced while at it.
"We faced constant danger from both sides of the political divide and suffered trauma by witnessing such levels of violence," he said.
The pictures are not in any particular order and reflect the intuition of the photographers picking up images at random.
Through the lens, they follow the trail of events from the slums of Nairobi to other towns and eventually the refugee camps.
Occasionally, viewers are allowed a breather with a sentimental photo of the many human sideshows that dot an otherwise horrifying main show.
A newborn at the internally displaced people's camps or children taking time out to play or the displaced scrambling for food aid all serve to illustrate the interaction that followed the bloodletting.
But on the whole, it is the gory images that capture the attention, especially for the reality they bring to many who simply heard it from the media.
There are dead bodies - with gaping bullets holes or cut up with a machete or simply burned to death. Probably even more emotive are the grieving faces awash with tears as mourners register their loss.
Had it been a movie, most of the images would have been censored, but this is no movie.
IN THE VISITORS' BOOK, JOHN Wagacha terms the scenes "chilling and shameful" but Wavinya and Kangii ask that President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga come to see the exhibition to appreciate the extent of the violence perpetrated in their names. But equally telling are remarks by another visitor, "So where are the happy pictures?"
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Previously, images of this nature were associated with other African countries - Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda. Kenyans can now see firsthand what blind political loyalties and other partisan animosities can do to a country.
As a sideshow, the exhibition has displays of newspaper cuttings to augment the main exhibition. These serve as a good reference and a reminder that it all actually happened.
For a people known for having incredibly short memories the exhibition is a must see - to serve as a lasting reminder of the value of peace.
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