It ain’t just black and white baby …

Well that’s proof for me.

The Guardian is running an exclusive set of photos by Zalmai

‘Exclusive photography by Zalma?Ø of the Nakivale refugee camp in Uganda. The settlement hosts 34,000 refugees mainly from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Burundi, Ethiopia and Eritrea. It receives all new arrivals coming to Uganda from Congo.’

The photos are in black and white.

Frankly, I know I keep banging on about it, but what is it about this most colorful of continents that every Tom, Dick and Harry with a lens has to shoot it in black and white, has to bring another black and white perspective to a continent rife with contradictions and contrasts?

On his website Zalmai himself insinuates that black and white is the color of despair (the opposite of hope) when talking about photos he took of his homeland Afghanistan:

‘“I felt that now, after such a long time, there was hope again for Afghanistan. It seemed to me that colours were returning and that they would be those of a peaceful country. And so I set out to find this hope, with ‚Äî for the first time ‚Äî colour film in my camera.”

Along with the black and white photography often goes an imparted sense of an African culture of dependency and despair, which is a myth. The same myth that would see do gooders contain tribes people¬† in a ghetto of their often cruel and sadistic ways, protected from the the evil influence of modernity, where we drive cars and educate our children and let women go about their business with their clitoris’ intact.

A little voice in my head says let it go,

but not too many months ago I was sat in a little radio station in Eldoret Kenya, training some young journalists who had just seen their town turn to flames, witnessed murder spread like the wind, and yet even they kept asking me why they only saw despairing pictures of Africa. The truth is, I told them, whilst the killing goes on, that’s the story they’ll keep telling, that’s the story they’ll keep printing.

Wherever you go, whoever is with you, whatever you see and whatever is said,

it ain’t just black and white

baby.