Priya Ramrakha: Photographer, Pan-Africanist

One of the most significant photography exhibitions of the year -- Priya Ramrakha: A Pan-African Perspective, 1950-1968 -- opens on Thursday, October 5th, at the FADA Gallery, in Johannesburg, South Africa. It will add immensely to our understanding of African photography. The exhibition draws on his recently rediscovered archive and brings the work of this pioneering African photojournalist to the public for the first time since his death in 1968. (Text continues below.) 

It's hard to overstate how important the recovery of Ramrakha's archive is for our understanding of photography in Africa. Shravan Vidyarthi, who made a film about Ramrakha and Erin Haney, who with Vidyarthis co-curated the exhibition, both deserve a long and loud round of applause. Archives matter. Without them, we can't remember the past. And, in the case of photo archives, we also can't see it. As Haney has said:

We cannot fully acknowledge the depth of photographic history in many parts of Africa because of disruption, migration, loss, and the destruction of civic and personal archives.

Ramrakha, who was of Indian descent, was born in Kenya and began working for his uncle's newspaper in the early 1950s. His photographs of the Kenyan anti-colonial struggle (sometimes known as the Mau Mau Rebellion) unmasked British colonial propaganda, which depicted the freedom fighters as savages and turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed by British and colonial troops.

By the mid-'50s, Ramrakha was photographing for South Africa's Drum magazine, which had opened a bureau in Kenya. After studying in the United States a few years later (where he made the photo of Malcolm X that you can see above), he became the first black African photographer to work for Time and Life. His work for Life brought him considerable acclaim. His coverage of the 1966 Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres in Dakar, Senegal, which you can see here, is a good example of the photography he did for the magazine. He's probably best known, however, for his photos of the Nigerian Civil War, especially his images from the break-away region, Biafra.

In 1968, Ramrakha lost his life when he was caught in cross-fire in while working in Biafra. Life ran a moving obituary, which you can read, here.

Priya Ramrakha: A Pan-African Perspective, 1950-1968, runs from October 5th to November 1st, 2017, at the FADA Gallery at the University of Johannesburg. More information is available on FADA's website.

* * *

Johannesburg is a long way from Charlottesville, Virginia, my hometown. But I'll have a chance to see Ramrakha's long-lost photos when I'm in town to present the opening address at the conference, Inhabiting the Frame: Documentary & Subjectivity in the Anti|Post|Colonial Visual Archive. I'll talk about Life, Ramrakha's erstwhile employer, and the ways in which it depicted Africa. I'm not giving anything away when I say that its stories about African and Africans were often marred by demeaning stereotypes and cliches. When he worked for the magazine, Ramrahka fought an uphill battle to bring a truer picture of the continent to its pages. Happily, he sometimes won.

*

Comments

[Dr Satyavrat Ramrakha]

Many thanks to all the organisers for the honour which has been bestowed on My Brother Priya.
I have no doubt that Priya will smile, bless and appreciate the effort.
Dr Satyavrat Ramrakha