Dan Nelken: The Road From Kampala to Gulu & Back Again
While Uganda is predominantly an agrarian country, it entered the cellular age about fourteen years ago. Ubiquitous phones are used for both communication and transferring mobile money. These technological advances have surpassed the country’s other infrastructure developments. Due to the lack of paved roads, rail transportation, municipal water, or sewage, Ugandans have adopted, through ingenuity and persistence, ways to transport and sell goods and survive in an often unforgiving economic environment.
Having traveled the roads from Kampala to Gulu and back numerous times as a volunteer for NGOs, I witnessed the industriousness of the Ugandan people, exemplified by their roadside commerce.
My senses were overwhelmed by watching the abundance of activities along the route. My initial attempts to capture this human drama in a single frame fell short of my expectations. On later trips, I shifted my perspective from one frame to another. I composed diptychs from similar vantage points to better capture the unfolding reality. These images, taken only a fraction of a second apart, purposely feature a repeating element – person, animal, shop – intended to either jolt or anchor the viewer. These diptychs, juxtaposing altered perspectives of the same scene, more accurately capture the pathos and exuberance of the unfolding human spectacle. The empty white space between two consecutive images represents the momentary blink between frames.
