Description

This is not a book about Africa, but about people the Journalist and Photographer Roland Brockmann met there on four journeys (2016-2017) through Kenya and Tanzania. The book is about brick-burners, teachers, shopkeepers, coffin-makers, farmers or fishermen, all of whom are ordinary people who give insights into their lives in their statements on the pictures. Their personal stories of love, sorrow, hope, separation or success form the backbone of the book, while their fireplace, workshop, apartment or field provide the stage for the pictures of the book. The author is always interested in encounters at eye level. As a reporter, Roland Brockmann has been reporting from Africa for over ten years – mostly on behalf of aid organisations or the media. And therefore above all about catastrophes or crises. After all, the Western gaze is hardly interested in everyday life in Africa. In the mass media, Africa appears either as a continent of misery or exoticism. With this view of Europe, this book wants to break down on Africa from above: It does not want to draw a representative picture of Africa. “Rather, we encounter men and women who face similar challenges in their everyday lives as many people in other regions of the world,” says Alexis Malefakis, ethnologist and curator Africa at the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zürich.