Nicola Callaghan's Photography (North East England UK): Narrative

I recently watched a documentary on BBC 4 about a film maker and photographer Harry Hook, who in the mid 80's, around 1984, photographed five Kenyan women. Around 30 years later he went back to try and find these women and photograph them as they are now. On his journey he also took photos of the life that is evolving there in the towns and cities that are growing and the tribes that are slowly shrinking and diminishing. He photographed a certain tribe, the Merans(not sure on the spelling), performing a sacred ritual that only happens every ten years. It is to do with the men of the tribe moving on in the next chapter of their lives, were they are no longer warriors and they can now marry and for this they sacrifice a cow each and do a dance that starts of slowly then intensifies as it progresses. It only happens every ten years because it is when each generation moves on, all the men together. A few of the men/initiates are overcome with emotion, stress and the psychological pressures and have violent seizures because of this ritual. The tribe call this Induka(not sure on the spelling). The Samburu (tribes name) call this ritual Lamuget (again not sure of spelling ), it is translated to 'the death of many cattle in one place'. Whilst most African tribe roots are being lost they do this ritual very traditionally with total conviction, it hasn't changed. Although some of the way people live have, the younger generation live both the traditional life and also for example one of the men works at Indi Airforce. He combines both these types of lives and living. After this very traditional ceremony some of the men use the internet effortlessly and update their Facebook pages with the traditional attire that they are wearing, linking both modern and the older ways of life. It shows just how far the 21st Century has come and this is what Harry Hook is keen on photographing, the changes to society in these African tribes, cultures, towns and cities.

Whilst on this journey he managed to find 4 out of five of the women as one died of aids, her name is Elisa Lekisere. He gave them a copy each of their photograph taken in the mid 1980's. One of the women didn't even recognise herself in the image until her family and friends told her that it was her. All of them looked happy to see their photos and were happy to allow Harry to take another one of them. He also asked them how they were now, about their children and how many they had and what was the happiest point in their lives. All of these women said that the point they are at now is the happiest they have been. These images he has took each have a story of their own to tell, whether it is a simple portrait of an individual with an animal,a group, showing their way of life, or an image of people with the artwork to their business, each is a powerful image in its own right and all go together to produce a great body of work.