John Kenny talks photographing African tribes without a flash and being mistaken for a God by a Rendille warrior.
Photographer John Kenny has travelled to the most remote corners of Sub-Saharan Africa, photographed extraordinary tribes and documented their traditional ways of life and fascinating heritage. His latest exhibition opens at Capital Culture this July with a wondrously compelling array of images of people adorned with majestic symbolic jewellery and wrapped in lengths of startlingly vibrant fabrics, all proud, poised and graceful. Kenny was drawn to the African continent four years ago: “By 2006 I felt that I really needed to see Africa through my own eyes. I could have been forgiven for thinking I knew the place already, but in reality I was only familiar with the media’s representation of it: a continuing stream of news focusing primarily on stories of despair.”
The striking photographic portraits in his latest show offer incredibly intimate snapshots of the everyday lives of individual tribe members. Turning up in Africa and trying to mingle with different clans took some careful planning, as Kenny informs me: “In most of the trips I needed to be with someone credible to engage with these communities, so journeys would initially start by getting to a remote gateway town and then searching for a local person who could act as translator and a guide to the areas. In parts of West Africa and Northern Kenya the communities that I visited were remote enough that interaction with Westerners was very infrequent.”
Personality and individuality brims forth in these de-contextualised works with the subjects starkly illuminated against dark black backdrops. Kenny removes the individuals from the rolling Saharan expanse of desert and incredibly, given their clarity and crisply subtle finish, takes his images without a flash or studio equipment. “In all the pictures,” John assures me, “it was nothing more complex than sunlight reflecting from dry earth.” This might sound like quite a daunting task but Kenny is adamant: “I actually think it’s far simpler to use the natural lighting of the sun than lug around a whole load of lighting kit and reflectors. I won’t pretend it’s without its complications, however. Sometimes you have a fascinating person who is in a hurry to go, and all of a sudden some big, dark equatorial clouds cover the sun.”
Travelling with different nomadic tribes has left Kenny with his fair share of amusing anecdotes and he fills me in on an encounter with Ltiriyan, a warrior, or Rendille Moran, and his camels at wells near Kaisut desert. “He examined me with some fascination, and appeared suddenly to notice the blue colour of the veins running across my arms. He grabbed my arm and started prodding the veins, and as his words became more frenetic, my guide translated to me that he was convinced that my blood was blue, and therefore I must be a god. It took my guide Mohammed the best part of half an hour to convince him otherwise!”
While he might be considered something of a God in Northern Kenya I wonder what the response has been like among the London audience. Kenny first showed two of his more recent colour pieces at the Affordable Art Fair this March and apparently the result was “encouraging”. “This July show will be my third in London showing portrait work from across the African continent,” he tells me. “The shows always seem to be attended by a passionate audience. I would also like to think the style of my portraits – intimate and very detailed – might make it a little easier to imagine the reality of each individual.”
There's no denying that the works are infinitely beautiful, curiously tactile and vivid, but is there some sort of message hidden beneath the surface – an environmental awareness of the encroaching urbanised world I wonder? “‘What should others take from my work?’ is a difficult question to answer,” Kenny admits. “I deliberately photograph the individuals in my pictures in darkness in a way that removes them from any distractions; my hope is that the viewer can feel a slightly greater sense of intimacy with them, and perhaps in some cases, start to imagine the life of the person before them.”
Sub-Saharan Journeys - Ethiopia and Namibia is at Capital Culture 9th-31st July.
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