Up and coming Exhabition in Pontypridd
I have a Solo exhibition of my work at the Pontypridd museum and Art centre over the month of march. Ironically I’m not around much as I will be reporting on Township evictions in South Africa. However Please go along as see the work I have 15 Images of my Namatala Slum work on show.
Pontypridd museum and art centre website
Namatala Slum Project on show in march
South Africa’s World Cup stadium of slums
Twenty years after the release of Nelson Mandela, the World Cup is coming to South Africa. Viv Smith looks behind the glamour to see what it means for ordinary people (read More)
Tin Town: A short documentary on the Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign
Tin Town Documentary
Promised housing by the South African government, more than a hundred Cape Town families found community through their struggle as squatters on a sandy road known as Symphony Way. Recently moved by court order to an indefinitely temporary relocation area dubbed ‘Tin Town’ or ‘Blikkiesdorp’ in Afrikaans, community members reflect on that road in their past and on the road ahead
Dear Mandela Video
Dear Mandela is a short documentary about how the poor who live in informal settlements in South Africa feel about their situations. 20 years after Mandela was realeased from prison has anything really changed.
Prepairing to go to South Africa
As part of my war on want, Document award win I have been commissioned to go to Capetown in South Africa to do a project on eviction that are happening in townships due to the cleanup programmes that the ANC are implementing before the World Cup. This is both going to be and exciting but very challenging project for me. Here is little bit of information on current events.
South Africa’s poor thretened by evictions
Abahlali baseMjondolo
The Abahlali baseMjondolo (Shack Dwellers) Movement began in Durban, South Africa, in early 2005. Although it is overwhelmingly located in and around the large port city of Durban it is, in terms of the numbers of people mobilised, the largest organisation of the militant poor in post-apartheid South Africa. Its originary event was a road blockade organised from the Kennedy Road settlement in protest at the sale, to a local industrialist, of a piece of nearby land long promised by the local municipal councillor to shack dwellers for housing.
War On Want award-Host Gallery London
The new photography award from War on Want, Document, recognised five up and coming young photographers, including the competition winner, Gareth Kingdon, at a packed reception last night. The award, which tasked photograhy students with capturing images of poverty across the globe, received numerous submissions from over eight countries.
A student from the University of Wales, Newport, Gareth Kingdon took vivid, panoramic photographs from Kibera, Kenya, Africa’s largest slum and one of the most densely populated places in the world. Joining Gareth at the reception were shortlisted candidates Paul Corcoran (University of Newport), Marianne van Loo (Blackpool and the Fylde College), Francesco Stelitano (London College of Communication) and Victor Yuliev (St. Petersburg Journalist’s Union). Yuliev was recognised as the best international entry.
The students’ works examined the issue of poverty in a number of settings, from council estates in the UK to the homeless in Russia, the tech centres of Mumbai to the unemployed youth in British towns. (The entries can be viewed below; the Guardian newspaper also printed extracts from the exhibition as centre spread.)
The shortlist was selected by a panel of experts chaired by Conrad Tracy, course leader for Commercial Photography at Bournemouth. The panel also included key industry figures such as Greg Whitmore (The Observer), Lauren Heinz (Foto 8) and Stephen Ledger, an independent photographer. Stefanie Pfeil of War on Want and Martin Coyne of Bond and Coyne Associates, a co-organiser of the event, also sat on the panel.
The exhibited is running at HOST Gallery, in central London, until 28 January. The exhibition will then travel to other UK sites, including Nottingham. For further
Images from War on Want exhabition at the Host Gallery in London
South Wales Echo Feature-Photographer Finds Positive Side to Slum Life
When Gareth Kingdon visited Africa’s largest slum he was determined to find a positive side to life there. He didn’t expect to find two pubs dedicated to Liverpool and Manchester United fans. He spoke to Abbie Wightwick
student photographer Gareth Kingdon has just returned from one of the world’s largest slums with these rare images of hope in poverty.
Gareth, 27, from Rumney, Cardiff, was determined to look for positive images when he went on assignment to the notorious Kibera slum in Kenya for his university course.
His efforts have won him a place on the shortlist for War on Want’s Document Photography Award 2010.
The second-year University of Wales Newport documentary photography student is one of just five shortlisted from scores of entries all over the world.
Gareth, who has worked in African shanty towns and slums on and off for 10 years with church and HIV/Aids charities, wanted to show a different side to poverty.
He says he was tired of negative images of slums – relevant though they are – and wanted to show the similarities between people rather than differences.
“I wanted to portray this slum in a positive light, highlighting the wealth of talent, skill and determination of its inhabitants,” he explains.
“The majority of press on the slum has a negative slant.”
Kibera is the largest slum in Africa. There are no official figures but it’s thought between 500,000 and 1.2m people live there.
Gareth made links with residents through charity Kibera UK and flew out to nearby Nairobi last November.
He was met at the airport by a Kiberan family who he stayed with for almost all his visit.
The family live in a rare concrete house in a slum made almost entirely of corrugated iron and mud. There was no running water and food was limited to maize and stew.
Later Gareth stayed with Kiberan friend Ken, 22, in his corrugated iron shack in the heart of the slum.
“It is chaotic. When you walk into Kibera the first thing that hits you is the size,” Gareth recalls.
“Then you go in and see all the houses built from corrugated iron and old advertising signs and mud and whatever people can get hold of.
“But when your look carefully you see all these people working incredibly hard and kids desperate to learn.”
There are no government services such as hospitals or schools in the slum and residents live and work in makeshift shacks with no water supplies.
Parents organise their own schools and charities run the few, small medical centres.
If people get very ill hospitals in nearby Nairobi are beyond their reach. Kiberans live on between £1 and £5 a day compared with £40 daily hospital fees.
But people are resourceful and determined to get on with their lives despite hardship, Gareth found.
His pictures show proud parents at their children’s school graduation, artists’ galleries, cafes and beauty salons.
The slum even contains a fish and chip shop, photographic studios, cinemas and two pubs, one for Manchester United fans, the other for Liverpool followers, both with satellite TV.
“The only difference between people here and there is lack of money.
“A lot of their interests are the same. I spent a few hours in a ‘mud pub’ watching Liverpool play,” Gareth says.
If trouble occurs there is no government police force so a community vigilante force keeps order.
Gareth says he did feel trepidation when he first arrived and people were surprised to see him walking around with his equipment, but he never felt threatened.
He toured Kibera with his host family and Ken who translated his requests for pictures into Swahili.
“People were wary because of the legacy of people coming and taking pictures of them beside piles of rubbish,” Gareth says.
“It took a lot of gentle persuasion but when they realised what I was doing they were pleased I was showing another side to Kibera and staying there instead of a fancy guest house outside.”
He says his stay at Ken’s gave him an insight into the harsh realities of slum life.
“His home was made of corrugated iron and three houses surrounded it.
“You could hear every movement and voice and there was a family of rats.
“There was no water or electricity but the weather was warm and Ken cooked on a charcoal stove.
“There was no sanitation but Ken was one of the lucky ones as he had access to a little community latrine – a hole in the ground.”
Gareth, who took care to drink bottled water, never got ill, but says his walks through the slum provided sharp contrasts.
“You had to be careful in the street, or corridors as they’re known, as they have water running through them and you have to step over it. The smell is incredibly pungent.”
Beyond the corridors artists, businesspeople, traders and musicians were making a living and following their interests.
Gareth saw carpenters and welders, musicians, cinema owners and even places where residents could pay for a playstation session.
“I did see negative signs all the time but I really had to change that ethos as I wanted to show another side too,” he explains.
“On my last day Ken, who I was also teaching photography to, said it had been really eye-opening for him because he often looked on the negative side. Now he’d seen Kibera in a different way.”
Gareth, who has also visited and worked in slums, townships and shanty towns in Uganda and South Africa, now wants to make a photo documentary of Mumbai slums.
He’s yet to persuade wife Clare, 29, a nurse, to join him on visits, but says with one in six of the world population now living in slums more should be known about them.
Gareth’s photographs of Kibera for the War on Want award go on show at the Host gallery in London from January 21 to 28.
The winner will be announced on January 21 and the exhibition will later go on tour across Britain.
Guardian Feature of Kibera Work
On Monday the 11th January my Kibera work was featured in the Guardian Newspaper. I was really pleased apart from the fact that the accredited my friend Andrew Otemba with the Work, O well.
Life in Kibera-Celebrating the Ordinary
Introduction:
One person’s slum is another person’s community. Historically, in 2008 there were more people living in the worlds crowded cities than in the countryside. In the same year the estimated number of slum dwellers exceeded 1 billion. Up to 1.2 million of those live in an area of 1.5 square miles to the south west of Nairobi in Kibera, which is the largest urban slum in Africa. Kibera is one of the world’s most studied slums due to the fact that the United Nation’s (UN) Habitats headquarters relating to population and housing are based in Nairobi. Kibera reputation is synonymous with Tribal violence, desperate poverty, appalling living conditions, high rates of unemployment, and a pandemic of HIV and AIDS. Because of these stereotypes much of the media coverage and references in popular culture are negative, and statistics are often exaggerated. Such statistics suggest than 50% of Kiberan residents are unemployed and that most of Kibera lives in less than $1.00 a day. Much of this false data comes from development organizations and NGOs who saturate Kibera and a competing for funds.
“On the other side: Kibera slum” is aimed at a Western viewer who’s understanding of slums such as Kibera is both limited and distorted by Western media. Instead of depicting the extremes of poverty or conflict I intend to provide the viewer with an intimate look at the positive aspects of Kibera, by depicting every day scenes, places and events that a Western viewer can relate to. By not focusing on the negative extremes my intention is for the viewer to be able to relate to the figures in the photos and build a relationship with them, recognizing the similarities of the figures lives with their own.
Strategy:
I chose to adopt a strategy called Virtual Reality. This consists of using 20 individual frames taken in a multi-row 360-degree rotation to create a single panoramic image. Panoramic images have two significant advantages over a single frame image. By encompassing the whole scene the viewer is able to gain a greater understanding of the subject matter due to the greatly increased visual field of information. The second advantage is that the photographer can no longer be accused of leaving out important information from outside the scene. An example of such is seen by many people in Kibera complaining that photographers photograph the poor sanitation or rubbish where outside the picture a flourishing business or school is ignored.
Virtual Reality images work both in print form and interactive media as a Quick Time rotational movie. This significalnyl broadens the market for the work, as it can be used in an ever-increasing interactive web based market, as well as in tradition forms such as print form in magazines, newspaper, books or in a Gallery space. The use of an interactive media presentation enables the subject matter to become more relevant to a contemporary audience in which traditional media print media has become irrelevant.
The H2 Artists Studio
Play-station Parlor
Hair Salon
Butcher shop
Fish and Chip shop
Record shop, Kibera Slum, Nairobi
Andrews House. My Buddy Andrew and his family were of great help to me.
Family In Kibera, My next door neighbours
Family In Kibera
Nubian Muslim Wedding
St Martins School, set up by a group of single mothers.
Dress Making shop in Kibera
Iron Mongers
Corner shop
Walking home from work
Going to work
Namtala work in The Gate art centre
I have submitted three of my prints from my Namatala work, which can be viewed at. The Gate art centre in Keppoch Street, Cardiff, CF24 3JW. The exhibition will run for 6 weeks from Friday 16th October. There is an opening of the exhibition between 6-9pm.
