Transcript

TEDxDar - Abdu Simba - Iconic Images and Identity

this is mostly a presentation that features a lot of photography given the the subject matter so you'll you'll bear with me as we quickly scroll down through some images and and i and i give the talk so as we start i'd like you to consider the following images that appear on the screen behind us here and as you look at them i'd like you to ask yourself what it is that these images make you feel what emotions do they evoke in you but perhaps if i stop at this picture this is a relevant point to which to say there's something else about these images i think as you see them the preceding ones with maradona's hand of god and princess died but let's stop on this one those of you who are lucky enough to have a wallet full of us dollars will not only recognize who this man is but you'll also recognize this picture this particular picture which of course appears on the 100 bill and that is the point about these images that clash behind you here is that they are very very specific and there's something about them and it is it is that something that is about them that i really want us to examine in uh what i'd like to examine in this conversation so i'll start with this particular shot for the friends that i do have over here and i'm glad to know that this is quite a few most will know that i have a an obsession with the sport of boxing and so it's almost inevitable that a picture like this would end up on a presentation that i'd have to make and what i'd like to refer to here is that this is of course as you all know cassius clay who in 1964 became the youngest at the time heavyweight champion of the world by defeating the mike tyson of the era sunny listen and it was a very significant event in the sense that nobody thought that this fellow had a chance absolutely no chance whatsoever and when he won there were all sorts of stories that went around the world that it was fixed that it couldn't have happened etc and their rematch was inevitable and by the time the rematch came along little more than one year later cassius clay had turned into muhammad ali and when he met sunny lisbon again this is what happened in the first minute of the first round now you'll indulge me you forgive me because this is a story that no doubt you've heard many times before it's been recounted many times before but i'd like you to consider all the elements that are in that story in that detail it has a very clear beginning middle and an end this young man emerged with an impossible dream faced all sorts of conflict and confrontation along the way and in the end triumphed against huge odds and a big evil and sunny listen was considered to be a big evil at that time and uh triumphs in the name of good so the tour that the picture if you like like many of the pictures that appears before us tells us a story and it is that story that lies behind the photograph that makes it i think iconic and it's not just me or you who believes it's iconic as you can see here another young man who in 2004 was writing his speech that he was going to deliver at the democratic convention chose to use this photograph with the preceding photograph up on his wall and i think it's a bit of a plant because this gives it away i think that that whiteboard was probably what was in that spot beforehand but as the cameraman came in we put the early picture on because i want i want everybody to identify this photograph with me that i am someone who believes in this triumphing against great adversity and great odds it says something about me and this is really what iconographics uh photography and photography is all about i believe it's all about storytelling this is why it touches us this is why it appeals to us storytelling and stories pictures as the old adage goes can tell more than a thousand words and after all when we think of cinema as well what is cinema other than uh you know the storytelling we've moved from the from the days of old and we'd sit around campfires and outside our caves and tell each other stories this is what cinema is all about and stories are also parables for life and they contain all the elements that all of us as human beings can connect to all the emotions are in there there's love and pain and loss and horror all of these things and because we understand all of us understand and share the same emotions we can really truly see how this is what informs our sense as human beings it forms our sense and our notions of identity so let's move on and examine this idea of identity and how images and iconic images connect to that these are the pyramids of giza the burial places of the pharaohs demigods at the time that they were that they were constructed actually up until the turn of the 15th century i believe these were the tallest buildings to be found anywhere in the world it's still one of the ancient seven wonders of the world lesser known but no less great great zimbabwe the sydney opera house a building that was completed i believe in the early 1970s uh the taj mahal probably the most wonderful testament to love that you could ever imagine a magnificent building the eiffel tower a remarkable piece of structural art created again to celebrate the centenary the 100th centenary of the french revolution and it's a wonderful piece of structural art and i know my friend uh walter would appreciate this this is a standout piece of of of of engineering because it is actually a radio tower and yet it defines the skyline of paris it defines paris itself it is a very functional building nonetheless and i know that he like many of us would wish that the people were constructing and building our town would be able to mask some of the monstrosities that they put around for practical reasons into things like this but nonetheless it serves as a symbol of national identity of french identity and then finally buckingham palace which if you look it up on wikipedia buckingham palace i think there's an entry that says that it's the rallying point for british people at a time of national crisis and rejoicing and i think many of us can recall the pit images that we saw when princess diana passed away the amount of flowers and people who all came to congregate around this building because it spoke to those notions of identity now a little sidebar at this point actually when we talk about these buildings and these monuments that we've seen previously that were created to inspire uh feelings of national pride it's a very thin line that is drawn between national pride and jingoism which of course is just extremism in another word and there is no clear example of this perhaps than some of the images that we saw in some of the monuments that were created at the time of maimai germany following the first world war which everyone at the time thought was going to be the war that would end all wars adolf hitler in less than 20 years arose to become a powerful force and being the man that he was and having the beliefs that he had that his people were master race and destined and of ruling the world he did what all great dictators must do which is to build these huge monuments full of scale and magnitude to say this is who we are this is why we are great and at the time i suppose in the 1930s in the early 1930s this was these kind of buildings would have had a very different effect these kind of scenes would have had a very different effect on people they didn't know what was going to come next i'm responsible for some of these pictures ironically was this lady who you can just about see lenny riefenstahl who is one of the foremost photographers of the 20th century and ironically lenny riefenstein after the after the second world war went on to become very famous for creating a book called vanishing africa i i believe which had some very very uh important photographs of people i think in juba and uganda and so on so from nazism to africa but nonetheless there she was and she created some of these shots which quite frankly this one in particular is one of the most chilling photographs that i i'm sure you have seen many times before and the reason it is chilling is that despite the intent of the photograph and the intention of the people who created those scenes what we came to see after the war was fought and lost by the germans was the real identity the people who had waged that war and who were the aggressors and this was the reality of nazi germany university these shots again which came around the world which were beamed all around the world afterwards and we continue to see today can be seen as being one of the justifications for the creation of the state of israel and is very much a part of their sense of identity in the sense of their memory so we cannot run away from this this fact so what does this say about how do we relate this a little bit closer to us let's narrow it down a little bit and perhaps look at ourselves now as a consonant images that have formed our sense of identity perhaps i think this is the i didn't double check this one but i'm going to guess this is ghana independence this one i don't have to double check on i think we most of us if we don't know we should know who this man is uh and then of course there's this fantastic shot now i was working for a public relations firm in in the uk at the time and on this day i think it was february the 11th we all knew like if the whole world knew that nelson mandela was about to be released newspapers all around the world getting prepared their front pages are prepared how are we going to place the story how we're going to place the photograph what's it going to look like etc and this happens now at the same time on the same day in japan i warned you i was a boxing uh lunatic mike tyson fought james buster douglas and he lost and it was the most incredible it was it was like ali and listen all over again and in the uk certainly the newspapers they had no idea what to do now so we've got two big stories you know mike tyson's has been knocked out nelson mandela is out what do we do and one of the tabloids the uk son chose to i don't know who it was who decided but it was genius and he said we'll run two pictures we'll put the picture of mike tyson picking up his gum shield off the floor and then we'll put this specific picture of nelson and winnie coming out and the headline above them was down with mike tyson and out with uh with this picture so this one always has an added poignancy but the point is this is truly one of these images that we can say is uh is a strong african image and one that as africans as human beings i think makes us feel all very warm inside but unfortunately for every one of these pictures he said with his punchline having been taken away there's pictures like this many of us here perhaps for many of you i should perhaps are too young to remember this awful piece of work that was emperor casa who chose to crown himself on this well there you have it but there are pictures like this and and quite a few of them there are also images like this of course none of us can and should remember or forget rather the horrendous situation in genocide in rwanda now in the 19 in the mid-1980s there was also the famine in eucopia which as far as tragedies go i mean how can what do we say these tragedies uh african tragedies or world tragedies are all as bad as each other but there was almost a frenzy that occurred after the famine in the mid-80s in kyogre and images like this this narrative this visual narrative of africa just came on in full force it seemed that you couldn't turn around you couldn't turn a page of time newsweek or in a newspaper without seeing these sorts of sites and all of us found them very disturbing then find them disturbing now and we must continue to find them disturbing for as long as we live in for as long as we see them because there really is nothing that can uh no words are needed to express the tragedy and the loss another narrative unfortunately that exists and that forces that that does reinforce this sort of caricature about us as africans how we live and how we are ruled is that of the soldier king the man who once was a revolutionary and in uniform and who emerged as a civilian to now rulers whether benevolent or malevolent it really doesn't make a difference this type of character the big man of africa seems to be born from one form of tragedy or another and whichever way we look in our history they seem to come out over and over and over and over again so is this who we are are we defined by these images should we be defined by these images of course we shouldn't and of course we're not because luckily there were publications like this there were images like this that came out in magazines like this drum magazine possibly one of the most important publications in africa and in many senses the precursor to the kind of publication such as the one that my my friend major here was responsible for co-founding bang and another important thing like this about these images rather is that they they portray us as africans in a light that we can all relate to that others around the world can relate to their positive images for once of another word and i think that when we think of film again let me drift back to the subject of film when we think of film and the nollywood pictures that we see or the bongo bongo pictures or riverboat pictures or whatever what to call it that we sometimes look and think my god these things are awful the production values are low and nonetheless but nonetheless you're still there we watch them because they give us a sense of a positive sense of self a positive sense of identity in a curious kind of way um there was a time i recall i can see my wife looking at me over there to recall watching a film called oprah hot sunday i don't know if any of you have come across this film with steven kanumba the title says it all and it really was the everything about it production-wise was it that we sat there gripped for two hours because it just spoke to us the food the doilies the furniture the language the story was a little bit suspect but we got the warm cuddly feeling that i think we can get when we're looking at images like this it seemed to represent who we were much more so than emperor bokassa or the horrors of rwanda so how about us as tanzanians then some years back i got the opportunity to do a little project for unesco who were looking to compile a list of all the photographers photographs and videos that they could find from the african liberation struggle and how it relate in tanzania now it was a it was a fantastic project and brought me uh allowed me the opportunity to go and scour through the archives the photograph archives of the daily news and the national museum and all of these places and the things i found there were remarkable the quality of the photos that i found there or in some cases nearly made me uh made me weak but at the end of it all there was something which remained with me something which endured and that was the fact that it seemed that however far back it seemed i went in transient we seem to be defined in many senses by the teachings the workings and the images of one particular name and here he is even a topic of discussion here today now i wonder to myself why this is i wonder is it because given that julius nier was the first president of an independent tanganyika is this the reason why we have a certain kind of sense of uh of of love and gratitude for him is it because under him we saw things like this this is a i think colonel niren i think he was at the time who went to the apex of mount kilimanjaro and what a what a wonderful heroic thing to do in an image that endures today is it because we saw things like this these images these actions seem to occur more in those times that's another photograph that i still continue to see in some people's offices until today the first legislative council i believe is this the one but the point is throughout all of these as you go through the archives and you look at these early pictures of tanzania up until 1995 and ironically many of these ones the photographs that you'll find in the archives wherever you may look for them in tanzania the further back you go in time the deeper you go back into the era the more poignant the pictures seem to be they seem to come from a time when people actually valued or saw value in photojournalism there seems to be that much more effort that has been put into composition it seems to be a little bit more dense about the kind of images the meaning behind what it is that we're seeing but i think above all else after i went through that project and after i've heard some of the things that i've heard here now and the fact that it is a topic of conversation you know through this tedx program i think what is quite clear is that for many of us who look back on that era with a sense of nostalgia and mark your nostalgia is always full of the most pleasant memories you hardly ever remember the bad things when you're having nostalgic thoughts but when we think backing and we look at these images they fill us with a sense of pride and they make us think that we belong at one point we were a country that was you know at the center of things like the pan-africanist movement you know a peaceful place we this is our union with zanzibar here here we see lujas nireira with the fidel castro of the united nations non-aligned south south corporate we weren't going to be told what to do nobody bullied tanzania even if we were poor we told them what we wanted and eloquently as well with prominent kumar i mean titans for african history east african corporation i think that they just invited calder to that photograph but for all intents and purposes that's eac for you the first time around and of course in the latter years here with jimmy carter so in summation i think i'd say that it's very hard to run away from the fact that one of the reasons why we have and continue to have this enduring sense of love and affection for their areas because it seems to belong to a time when we felt and continued to feel that we were something and in that sense he is us and we are he at our greatest hour and that is because the photographs tell us so thank you very much you