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Interview with Boniface Mwangi, Founder Picha Mtaani
Date Published: Monday January 11, 2010
At a tender age of 26 years, Boniface Mwangi has achieved what most photojournalists just dream of. His work has appeared in virtually all the important newspapers in the world and he's won several international wards. His brave work during the post-election violence and after has made him more than just famous. It has attracted both positive (mostly from foreigners) and negative reactions (from local politicians). He's discovered his true passion and compassion and has gone ahead to found Picha Mtaani - an organization that seeks to address pressing communities issues through pictures as a starting point. Tujuane.com reporter, Kevin Mwanza, caught up with him last month for an interview and here is what he had to say about his work.
Please tell us about Picha Mtaani?
Picha Mtaani is a youth initiative that seeks to provide a safe space where young people can come and address issues about violence. We give young people a safe platform where they can come as individuals and see violence pictures for personal healing and at the same time to initiate dialogue. From these you get personal healing and consequently community healing from the effect of the post election violence. It's not just a gallery of pictures. It shows the effects of tribal violence on the society.
How has Picha Mtaani developed over time? Is it growing or has it evolved into something different?
Picha Mtaani is one year old now. I started it as an idea when I left Standard Group. I realized I had covered the post election violence extensively, which had been perpetrated by young people in the streets. I realized the only way to reach them is to go where they are, in the streets, thus the name Picha Mtaani - meaning 'street exhibitions'. We go where the people are and show them the effect of violence and why we should not go back there again.
We travel to different places across Kenya and meet with local youth groups. We work with about 200 community youth groups across the country. Every where we go, we leave them with a caucus that 'pamoja tunaweza' - meaning 'together we can'. That together we can eliminate tribalism and together we can heal, forgive and move forward as a country. We encourage them to take pictures that affect them and put them on display. We also look at local problems affecting them and encourage them to talk about these issues. We are helping different communities to discuss and solve their own problems using our Picha Mtaani platform.
Who do you work with? (partners, team, sponsors)
George Gachara is the project coordinator and Karen Wakoli is the project administrator. I'm the founder of the project and Gachara is the co-founder. We also have other people/volunteers. In total we are a team of about 16 people. We are being funded by UNDP. In our implementing partners we have the US Embassy, the National Youth Convention, and On-Screen Production among others.
How is Picha Mtaani funded? Are there any challenges regarding this?
Right now we are being funded by UNDP. It took eight months to get the funding. We had planned to start traveling in April but due to the delay we have to travel one year later. It was a long process, but the money was given along budget line and they are not controlling us. They are just funding our idea.
THE PHOTOJOURNALIST
Tell us how you started out being a photojournalist?
I was in Bible school and I came across a book by Mohammed Amin - his autobiography. I read the book, loving his work and what he had done with his photography. I too loved photography and I thought I could make a difference by becoming a photographer.
A year later, in 2004 when I turned 21, I joined a photography school but quit three months later when I realized they did not have any cameras. I hired a camera and started taking photos in neighborhoods around Pangani where I lived then, particularly the slums, recording daily life.
I got two awards from the Kenyan Union of Journalists after my work was published in the East African Standard in a column they ran called 'Face the Facts'. The section ran an unusual picture, between Tuesday and Thursday, reflecting ordinary life in Kenya. I featured regularly in this and won two awards - 'Most Promising Talent Of The Year' and 'Most Promising Young Photographer Of The Year'. The Standard thereafter gave me a job to become a paparazzi, taking photos of night life and celebrity shots for Pulse Magazine.
This gave me a chance to get into all sorts of photography. News editors would ask me to look out for images with news angles. This gave me a chance to take other kinds of pictures such as crime scenes, and fires. The editors soon transferred me from entertainment into mainstream news based on my work.
How was it for you covering the post election violence?
It was traumatizing. I was covering war in my own country. I understood the language of the people that were killing or being killed. Sometimes I have nightmares about it. As much as I was able to document a piece of history it was not easy for me. As a photographer it's good to cover wars, but not in your own country.
Briefly describe how your standard day as a renowned photojournalist pans out?
At the moment I'm not doing so much photography due to Picha Mtaani. But I'm up before 7.00 am, I'm in the office by 9.00 am and I go to bed at about midnight. Most of my days are spent on meetings. When I'm working on shooting pictures, I usually wake up at 6.00 am and spent the whole day in the field and come back and work on the pictures. I also have people who work for me at the studio and I the field.
Your activities sometimes have been criticized, with you being blocked from Facebook and being arrest for heckling president Kibaki. How do you deal with these?
I even have a court case regarding that Kibaki incidence. It's challenging because you have to make personal sacrifices and people mistake your intentions. The truth is I want a better country, not only for me but for my son who's two years old. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure the country heals and becomes a better place. That's the reason I left the news room, because there is lot of shirred, a lot of lies and misleading headlines every other day and they are not even informing the public. I realized the only way I could make change is to leave them and stand up for what I believe in. what I believe in is that the perpetrators of violence should be arrested, justice should be done for the victims, we should reconcile and reject negative ethnicity. We need to reject tribalism, we need to change our leaders and if need be we need a revolution by the young people of this nation.
And I think I'm getting support from Kenyans on this. Over 250,000 people passed through the Picha Mtaani exhibition at Hilton and over 20,000 of them filled our questionnaire. Majority of Kenyans want real change and shun tribalism and violence. The minions who control this country are the ones who don't want this. At Picha Mtaani we don't support politics and don't have any political intends. We believe all politicians are crooks.
You have won numerous awards internationally; do you receive the same kind of recognition here in Kenya?
Prophets are not celebrated at home. Kenyans don't have to recognize me. My work is celebrated more by foreigners than locals. As long as there is peace and my family is safe that's all I want. If this country degenerates into chaos, we'll all suffer. As a family man all I want in this country is peace for everyone. Accolades don't make good roads and they don't provide food. The kind of people this country celebrates are mostly criminals.
How do you see your career as a photojournalist develop into the future?
I believe my future in photojournalism is going to be very successful. But I think I want go into more activism than photography. I want to shoot documentaries and take pictures that make a difference.
What would be your advice to a young person who admires your work and wishes to emulate?
First, the most important think is that you need to acquire a good camera. Then you need to study other peoples work and keep shooting. You can only be good by keeping on shooting and borrowing style from other successful photographer. It requires long hours and sacrifice. Your work will be thrashed and rejected, but just keep doing your thing and forget about critics. Classes are important, but you need to develop your own unique photographic eye. Good photographers are not taught, most of them are self made.
What are some of the challenges you face being such a radical photojournalist in Kenya?
I've been arrested, beaten up, intimidated and my work is not published sometimes. I cannot go to cover the president or the prime minister because they think I will heckle them. I'm paying a price for what I stand for, but I don't have any regrets.
In terms of property rights and patenting your hard earned work, what do you do to ensure it's not misused or plagiarized?
Kenya has very weak copyright laws, almost non-existent. People will lift your work from the internet; I've seen my work on a TV station, they never paid me and I can't sue them for that. Actually it’s not easy to patent your work in Africa. For most of my social work I give it out for free. Since I have little control over its use and giving it out there is better for everyone. I'm now more into social documentary than anything else.
THE INDIVIDUAL
Tell us about yourself? What is your personal background? (growing up, family, ambitions)
I grew up in poverty, in Eastlands Nairobi in a family of seven siblings. I struggled all through to be where I'm today. I did a lot of stuff which I can't go into. Now I'm a married man with one wife and a two-year old son. As I said before, I went to bible school, where I developed my ambition in becoming a successful photojournalist.
What are the challenging and fulfilling bits of being Boniface Mwangi?
First, I'm a born-again Christian. I've come this far because of God's grace. If you think miracles don't happen you just have to look at my life to know that miracles do happen. Work wise, I can't cover Kenyan politicians. Being me, everyone thinks I have a chance to give them a job or mentor them, which is not true. I'm actually a generation away from poverty. I may not be poor but my brother is poor, my cousin is poor and everyone thinks you can help them and have a solution to their problems.
It is fulfilling seeing my work making a difference. During the recent exhibition I was humbled that my works was touching all those people's lives. If I die today I know I would not have lived in vain and people will remember me and my work.
CONTACT INFO
Picha Mtaani
Uniafric House, Koinange Street
Tel: +254.720.712.730
Fax: +254 20 123 456 /
P.O Box 17654-00100 Nairobi, Kenya
Email: info@pichamtaani.com
Website: http://www.pichamtaani.com
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