The publication of Uganda: A Picture History 1857-2007 could be a historic moment for both Ugandan and international historians, and the generations of youngsters that have often struggled to draw images in a jubilant effort to visualize the letters in the books of history.
Often, history is told or written with a bias—writers either choose to recollect with anguish, cutting out or adding barbs for ‘psycho-historic pleasure’ or smilingly use their pens to ink poetry on the pages.
Two birds could be dead by this book: A fairer and more balanced display of history, and a visual portrayal of the words. There might be a third bird: history that successively sustains reading pleasure—if not watching.
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Book: Uganda: A Picture History Volume: 298 pages Publisher: Fountain Publishers Kampala Publication: 2008 Available: Aristoc Booklex Reviewer: Yusuf Serunkuma |
It was Mexican painter Frida Kahlo who demonstrated the power of speech of a picture. Her pictures spoke loud—enough, and with a razzle-dazzle precision. Most importantly, her pictures were wrought with emotion and beauty. A close pattern is visible in this Fountain Publishers’ publication.
Uganda: A Picture History has, to a commendable degree, lively captured the romance and mess that Uganda has journeyed. A country that has moved in both virtuous and vicious cycles: Blessed by nature and battered by politics; unified by folklore, hued by colonists, and sometimes, by the colonist successors too. Chaptered based on the colonial and presidential untimable reigns; it is not one you will find with professorial analyses—just pictures telling a story.
Hand-drawn and grey pictures bring the book into motion, often showing landscape and vegetation and the royal circles,—though grey, they provide an amazing in-lived romance and calm. Most of the pictures in the first chapter of the book are still as compared to those that were taken in the times that follow, perhaps representative of the time. Action pictures cram the biggest part of the last half of this book, telling that story too. In fact, to those who often find the mendacious chronicles of history a rewarding reading, these are pictures for a field day. The story is told in a thousand words—to both the ridiculous and the dear nitty-gritty.
There is a recognizable way this book reinforces appreciation of people and places, which seem to combine and create an impressive and telling spectacle.
With several mug-shots, the editors display an album of the goatee and bushy bearded colonial lords, their renowned trademark of exploitation glittering on their faces.
Who could argue that Iddi Amin was handsomer and the most jovial of all Ugandan presidents? And had the most elaborate affair with the people he led?
There could be no precise structure of telling the story of Iddi Amin’s flamboyance, or arrogance as the pictures capture him. How he gives speeches pocketing and bulging, and on bicycles, sometimes! How whites carry him like a monarch, and the demonstrative look on Gen. Blairs face after he was made to kneel before entering Amin’s hut.
This picture book creates room for not only imaginative but also interesting comparisons. Sir Edward Mutesa seems to have had the most eye-catching first lady, only contested by the younger Miria Obote. Aerial pictures seem to suggest that Kampala city was better organized in the mid seventies than it might be now. Two medium close up pictures might suggest a ‘dilapidated’ but handsomer and more steady ‘just from the jungle’ guerilla fighter in president Museveni, than perhaps the man now.
 It is the long awaited addition to both learning and private reflection: A timeless tourist attraction—a national portrait for the country’s miniature museum, a kind of documentary that is fit for all age rating. Being bound by time though, readers are to expect either an annual revision, or one to happen after a decade.
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written by dulufu kakeeto, January 12, 2009
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written by a guest, May 18, 2009
:kiss: :lol: :dry: :silly: :angry: :0 :confused: :cheer: :shock:
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