Mobile people, phones and photography

Somali visual practices in Nairobi's Eastleigh estate

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2103434
AutoresN Carrier (0000-0002-9020-2516, University of Bristol, autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen89
Número2
Páginas225-245
Fecha de publicación2019-05-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAfrica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0001972019000044
OpenAlexW2946273189
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas19

The coming of the mobile phone camera has transformed photography. This article explores this transformation through a case study of photography in Eastleigh, a Nairobi estate that is home to many thousand Somalis, both Kenyan Somalis and refugees from Somalia. It is a trade hub for East Africa, a social and economic hub for the global Somali diaspora, and a place regarded as suspect in a country where Somalis have long been marginalized. This article examines Eastleigh as photographic subject and setting, comparing the ubiquity of mobile phone photography there with seldom-practised more traditional forms of photography that are often treated with suspicion in an estate subject to securitized government policy and negative press. It shows how mobile phone photography helps people in the estate communicate visually with the wider Somali diaspora through social media, and how it helps people sell their goods, using as a case study a particular archive of images sent through WhatsApp to the author by Mohaa, a friend of his and a trader in the estate. The article also adds a political dimension to recent anthropological theorizing on mobile photography, showing how, in Eastleigh, Somalis have used photography and social media to take control of the way in which the estate is represented visually, and to demand from the state better services and better treatment

Art · Diaspora · Kenya · Media studies · Mobile phone · Photography · Political science · Politics · Real estate · Social media · Sociology · Somali · Telecommunications · Visual arts · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Computer Science · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Law