Engaging photographic portraits from East Africa, by British photographer John Kenny.
In 2006 I devised this unique style of portrait photography within traditional communities. Back then, at the very start of my Africa journey, I was buzzing with energy having met people of real magnetism just days into my trip. I was excited by extraordinary people and fascinating cultures, and I wondered how I could possibly communicate and express these feelings of excitement to friends and family back home.
The solution, I imagined, would involve abstracting the remarkable from the not so remarkable: put simply, I felt that the vibrant and intense people I met in traditional communities would show these traits best on camera when they were removed from the often dull and dusty backgrounds of their immediate environment. After a few days I started to imagine each of these people in front of me emerging from the nothingness of darkness, with no distractions, hoping that this would provide a real feeling of proximity between the viewer and the person in the picture. I made a conscious decision to leave a more documentary style of environmental portraiture for others, and adopted a relationship of subject/darkness which is close to a ‘chiaroscuro’ style (something I later learnt). Practicing this new technique in remote African villages in 2006 I had nothing but sunshine and a hut available as a great ‘open studio’: so I used these parameters and started experimenting (I’ve never really liked flash anyway). So it’s simply the illumination of natural sunlight, and sun on dry earth, that reaches into the darkness of huts and lights up these remarkable people. Sun and dry earth are the only ingredients required for the lighting in my prints. And of course, you also need to find exceptional people! [JOHN KENNY PHOTOGRAPHY]