Mohamed Amin, the African photojournalist, before the 1984 Ethiopian famine

Abstract

This study analyzes the professional career of Kenyan photojournalist Mohamed Amin, who is known for documenting the 1984 Ethiopian famine with images of the tragedy and also for capturing the extermination of the Ethiopian people during the dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam. The images that were broadcasted by the BBC shocked the world’s public opinion and had great international repercussions, mobilizing governments, individuals, and institutions. Some sources mention him as the man who moved the world, unfortunately reducing his visual work to this tragedy. This study, however, shows that although the report on the famine gave him international prestige, Mohamed Amin had already carried out an intense and prestigious previous work in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. For this purpose, a descriptive historical method is applied to the most important works (reports, interviews, and photo books) produced by this African photojournalist before 1984. The analysis includes international literature, produced works, and the collections of the Mohamed Amin Foundation in Nairobi (Kenya), which relate to the most important milestones of his visual corpus, composed of more than 8,000 hours of video and approximately 3.5 million photographs taken between 1956 and 1996 If Cartier Bresson was considered the eye of the world, Mohamed Amin was the eye of Africa.

Keywords:

• Amin, Mohamed
• Africa
• graphic journalism
• Ethiopian famine 1984
• post-colonialism
• African ordinary life

1. Introduction and state of the art. The exclusive on the famine in Ethiopia

On 23 October 1984, the BBC aired a report produced by Michael Buerk with images by Mohamed Amin about the refugee camps in Korem: “Death is everywhere. A child or an adult dies every 20 minutes. Korem, an insignificant town, has become a place of pain” (Amin & Buerk, 1984). Ethiopia was under the Marxist dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam, who had defeated the last Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, through a military coup in 1974. In 1984, the country still had restricted areas for foreign media, but the correspondent of the British public broadcaster had been taken to the Ethiopian highlands, to the region of Tigray, thanks to the contacts of Mohamed Amin, a Kenyan cameraman and photojournalist (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 214).

The information from Korem in Ethiopia led the BBC afternoon and evening bulletins on October 23 and was repeated the following day. This almost seven-minute report contained images of famished and desperate people arriving to seek food and shelter in that refugee camp. The piled and hungry people coexisted with death and daily burials of mothers with children, children without fathers, or orphans with no one. These photographic and video images were captured by Mohamed Amin for television channels (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Mohamed Amin with Michael Buerk filming the famine in Ethiopia (1984).

The length of the report was exceptional. “It was remarkable for a foreign news story in the UK, set in a developing country, and with no British angle. In the days that followed, Ethiopia news footage was seen by almost a third of the adult population” (Franks, 2013a: 2). The report was also quickly replicated by other international television networks, and within a short period of time, 425 television networks from around the world broadcasted the images of that desperation to a global audience of 470 million people (Janson et al., 1990, p. 154). John Simpson, BBC World Affairs Editor, believes that “the famine in Ethiopia was probably the most important news that BBC Television News broadcasted in the 1980s until the fall of the Berlin Wall” (Simpson, 1999, p. 368).

However, the sequences in the Korem report also received negative criticism, focused on the content of the images, that is, the frames of representation. According to some authors, Amin’s audiovisual images reinforced the stereotype of Ethiopian and African poverty and drama. “The hungry child with eyes full of flies and about to die has become the universal symbol for photographers and image editors when representing the 900 million people and 57 countries that make up the continent” (Clark, 2009, p. 153)., In short, it is considered that the informative reality about Africa was built on colonial structures of power and knowledge—both from the “otherness” - to assert a specific position of dominance. This dominance is perpetuated in contemporary images of the black continent (Clark, 2009, p. 3). It should be noted that “the problem is not that people remember through photographs, but that they only remember the photographs. The reminder through this means eclipses other forms of understanding and memory. Execrable deaths (due to genocide, famine, and epidemics) are almost exclusively what people retain from the whole web of iniquities and failures that have taken place in postcolonial Africa” (Sontang, 2003, p. 37).

Different interpretations have been published about the impact of these images. In Susan Moeller’s opinion, creator of the theory of compassion fatigue, “the magnitude of the suffering contributed to creating the impact, but it was the quality of the images that made the scenes so striking” (1999: 117). For William Lord, producer of the World News Tonight program on the American network ABC, the fast-paced American style in the visual editing of the images contrasted with “Amin’s slower camera work, which allowed the audience to form strong impressions. It was as if each clip was an award-winning still photograph” (Lord, 1984, cited in Moeller, 1999, p. 117).

Thus, the tragedy in Ethiopia was, on the one hand, “the archetype of media famine.” An archetype was generated that was later visually replicated in the tragedies of Sudan, Somalia… And, on the other hand, the famine captured by Mohamed Amin had the ability to “mobilize Americans as no previous media report had done. In one fell swoop, years of apathy towards hungry Africans were eliminated” (Moeller, 1999, p. 111).

In summary, this television broadcast constituted a key moment in the evolution of the television medium in which “a story matters, in which indifference disintegrates under the moral imperative of television images” (Moeller, 1999, p. 124). The important thing is that the camera that may have seemed ruthless was different. “Somehow, this was not objective journalism but confrontation. There was a dare here: ‘I dare you to turn away, I dare you to do nothing’… Amin had transcended the role of journalist-cameraman and perhaps unwittingly become the visual interpreter of man’s stinking conscience” (Tetley, 1988, p. 9).

1.1. The consequences of the report on the Ethiopian famine

The images acted as a catalyst that captivated and transformed public opinion in general, and activists in particular. Without the broadcast of Amin’s images, nothing would have happened in the chain of events for African international aid. For example, British singer Bob Geldof was the promoter of the Band Aid campaign and Live Aid concerts, and he inspired the union of American singers Harry Belafonte, Lionel Richie, and Michael Jackson with the song “We Are the World, We Are the Children” (Tetley, 1988, p. 275).

Mo’s images “acted like an international siren, informing the world about the difficult situation of the victims of the famine in Ethiopia and stimulating the greatest humanitarian aid effort the world had ever seen” (Franks, 2013a, p. 232). Before the arrival of the internet and social media, the BBC report went viral and was broadcast by numerous television networks around the world, as noted. “It was itself a transformative moment in the modern history of the media” (Franks, 2013b).

The tragedy also had visible and invisible personal consequences in Mo’s life, since “you can’t remain indifferent when people are dying as far as the eye can see” (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 217). Mo’s public visibility as “the man who moved the world” (Mitchell, 2018) made him a celebrity (even more so than he already was in Kenya) and an internationally acclaimed journalist since 1984. While internally it was a moment of pain, externally it was the zenith of his career. He received 22 international awards after Ethiopia, including the Best News Coverage Award (1984) from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta), the A. H. Boerma Award from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (1984), the International News Journalism Award from the Royal Television Society (1984), and the Kenny Rogers World Hunger Media Award at the UN headquarters in New York (1985). In addition, the journalist was named a Member of the British Empire by the Queen of England in 1992, while former President George Bush presented him with a symbolic check for one billion dollars in American aid to Ethiopia at the White House. In Kenya, Mo was named a member of the Order of the Grand Warrior by President Daniel Arap Moi.

The consequences of success did not change Mo’s professional approach. Mohamed Amin wanted and managed to work with images until the end of his days, even when he lost his left arm in an explosion in 1991 and presented himself three months later in London before the directors of the Reuters agency to continue working with his new bionic arm.

2. Objectives and methodology

The objective of this work is to highlight the need to reposition the historical perception of the photojournalist Mohamed Amin in African photography. The aim is to describe Amin’s personal and professional trajectory before producing the report on the 1984 Ethiopian famine.

His work, composed of 3.5 million images and over 8,000 hours of video, has been simplified and nearly reduced in the public opinion and academic literature to the significant impact of the 7-minute BBC news report on the Ethiopian famine of 1984. These images were replicated by 425 international television channels, reaching an estimated global TV audience of 470 million people (Janson et al., 1990, p. 154). This television report was the catalyst for the launch of the USA for Africa and Band Aid campaigns featuring singers Bob Geldof, Michael Jackson, and Lionel Richie for humanitarian aid in Ethiopia. In other words, the audience impact of his images justifies the importance of rescuing his work prior to international success.

When the Ethiopian famine hit in 1984, Mohamed Amin had been in the profession for over 25 years, accumulating technical expertise, professional experience, conflicts, and contacts, without which it would have been impossible to achieve the exclusive coverage for which he became famous: the Ethiopian famine. It should not be forgotten that, as stated in the introduction of the article:

The country [Ethiopia] remained restricted to foreign media in 1984, but the correspondent from the British public broadcaster had been taken to the Ethiopian highlands, specifically the Tigray region, thanks to the contacts of Mohamed Amin, the Kenyan cameraman and photojournalist (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 214).

In his own biography, Mohamed Amin noted:

Getting permits was very, very difficult [since I requested them six months in advance]. Weeks had already passed since we received permission to go north. I had been negotiating with Tafari Wossen, the information chief of the Ethiopian Relief and Rehabilitation Commission of the Mengistu government. I had known Tafari for over 20 years and put a lot of pressure on him, explaining that our visit was for the benefit of millions of his compatriots. Tafari explained to us that they had decided they didn’t want us to go to Makele or Korem in the Ethiopian province of Tigrey [a restricted zone]. Instead, they wanted to take us to other places and show us their resettlement plans. They accused us of only being interested in showing the horrors and not what the government was doing to solve the problem [of the famine]. This, of course, was partly true, but I argued that it wasn’t the case and that we had to show the problems before we could show the solutions. Tafari remained unconvinced, so in the end, we argued, and I stormed out of his office in fury. […] But I kept insisting, and in the end, he gave us permission to go to Makele and Korem. (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 214)

It is worth noting that Amin worked for several Anglo-Saxon media outlets such as Visnews-Reuters, BBC, NBC, and others prior to 1984. At that time, due to cultural clashes and prejudices, only a few international media outlets worked with and sought out local African journalists.

This study’s objective is precisely to analyze the evolution of Mohamed Amin before the 1984 famine. If the visual impact of Ethiopia increased and multiplied his work with awards and professional recognition, it is because there was also an earlier Mohamed Amin as a photojournalist before the 1984 famine. He had prestige, merits, and exclusives in Western media and international accolades. In other words, the historical figure of Mohamed Amin and his public peak with the images of Ethiopia cannot be understood without first glimpsing his ascending trajectory from 1956 that leads to the Ethiopian news drama.

Therefore, this study aims to demonstrate the existence of an extensive photographic body of work prior to 1984. To do so, the complete documentary archive of the Mohamed Amin Foundation in Nairobi, Kenya, was analyzed from May to July 2021. The archive has been closed to the general public since his death in 1996, at which point the digitization of his archive began, although many of the collections are still in an analog phase today.

The analysis has focused on an approach to primary and secondary sources about Mo, in addition to the on-site study at the Mohamed Amin Foundation conducted for three months in Nairobi, Kenya. This has allowed not only to become familiar with the complete collection of images and all his published and stored works in one place but also to find people, objects, and materials related to his figure.

This research has been carried out by reviewing personal documents and letters, as well as interviews that are preserved, such as the titled “De Kruising van Afrika. Dutch Enterview Mohamed Amin” (1985) or “Mohamed Amin, Camera Action” (1990). The study at the foundation itself has also allowed for personal interviews with his son Salim Amin (president of the Foundation), Trupti Shah (editor Mohamed Amin’s Foundation for the Google Arts & Culture), and Saidi Suleiman (accompanying him on his trips to elmolo’s tribe and the printer of his images for over twenty years at his company, Camerapix).

On 19 October 2021 - twenty-five years after his death—the Mohamed Amin Foundation announced the launch of his figure with Google Arts & Culture. It is a permanent exhibition on this website about Mo’s life and work from 1956 to 1996, with 6,553 digitized images in 58 thematic reports and galleries, presented with a narrative language of hypertexts and links, in English and other languages.

For now, this is how the managers of the Mohamed Amin Foundation have chosen to expand his historical figure, showcasing a small part of his works on the internet and making them accessible to people around the world. This has been a significant advancement in their general online dissemination, but it is still a small step towards the entirety of his work.¹

In summary, interest in his figure derives from three aspects: his immense and diverse oeuvre, his work on the media peripheries of Africa, outside the epicentre of the Western world. The constructionist approach to photography holds that photographs are a construction and that the vision/reality they convey is selective and codified (Tshuma, 2021), which is why it is essential to rescue his photographs as they show a pan-African perspective, and his role is that of an observer of post-colonial events wherever they took place, in an era before the massification of globalisation with the internet and social networks. Precisely, the constructivist approach argues that photographic representation and its power are contextual because its meaning “depends on a range of historical, cultural and technical contexts” (Clarke, 1997, p. 19).

A descriptive historical method is used that takes into account the historical, political and social context, as well as Amin’s origins and work, establishing three stages in his evolution:

1. From 1958 to 1961, his stage as a photojournalist in local media

2. From 1961 to 1962, the period in which he worked as a cameraman and photographer collaborating with photographs (for newspapers and magazines) and with filming (for local and foreign TV channels).

3. From 1963 to 1996 as a photographer, cameraman, TV producer-director and editor of his own agency: Camerapix.

The key events of each of these stages, his contributions to photojournalism, and the ideas that drove his initiatives at each moment are briefly outlined. Next, the most representative events of the two main themes of his work are addressed: a) postcolonialism and especially the imprisonment and torture suffered in Tanzania, photographic coverage of the assassination of Tom Mboya in Kenya, and exclusive interviews with Ugandan Idi Amin; and b) daily Africa in the emergence of African states, especially through the publication of photobooks before 1984, such as Cradle of Mankind in Turkana (1981) and Journey through Pakistan (1982). This analysis is established from the perspective of constructing a narrative history, in order to be remembered (Marcos Molano, 2022).

To carry out this work, a thorough analysis has been conducted on the different folders and topics of the photographic archive, as well as part of the audiovisual archive of the Mohamed Amin Foundation, during an initial on-site visit to the archives located in Nairobi (Kenya). The criteria for selection have been chronological and thematic, aligned with the organization of the documentary collections in folders, including printed copies and negatives. With the assistance of the staff at the Mohamed Amin Foundation, only six images have been chosen among the dozens of Mo’s most recognizable photographs. Each of these six images reflects significant events in the photographer’s life.

However, a broader investigation is currently underway, involving a selection of 100 photographs that will be analyzed using the methodology developed by Javier Marzal (Marzal Felici, 2004; Marzal Felici, 2011). This comprehensive approach includes nearly 200 variables and is part of a project that will result in a doctoral thesis. The work presented here is only one of the initial outcomes, aiming to highlight the historical importance of the photographer.

There are two biographies. The first was written by Kenyan British journalist Brian Tetley (1988), a close personal friend of Mo’s who tragically died alongside our subject in a hijacked plane in Ethiopia in 1996. The second biography, titled “Mo, the Man Who Moved the World”, was written by Smith and Amin’s (1998). Since 1996, there has been a slow but steady trickle of academic contributions on his work or person, totaling around forty publications. These range from articles with simple mentions to reflections on his work beyond mere citation.

However, no relevant bibliography is exclusively dedicated to our subject; rather, he is mentioned in various study topics for his contributions in those fields. His images are used as sources or visual support in volumes on tourism nature (Seeteram et al., 2019), or history, such as the work “Kenya: Between hope and despair, 1963–2011” by Yale University (Branch, 2011). In summary, there is no exclusive study solely focused on the photojournalist Mohamed Amin. The most relevant academic production selected on Mo consists of twenty articles where citations are extensive and not simply used as supporting sources for other works. Thus, for the purposes of this work, they can be grouped into five content blocks: identity (Sheikh-Miller, 2015), colonialism (Palmer, 1987), famine (Moeller, 1999), Africa Vanishing (Kasfir, 2002), and the legacy of Mohamed Amin (Franks et al., 2017).

In summary, the located bibliography consists mostly of Anglo-Saxon authors, mainly from British, American, or South African universities. This is understandable as Kenya was part of the British Empire during a significant portion of our subject’s life, and Mo worked with media outlets of Anglo-Saxon culture. On the other hand, there have been few African authors who have studied his work, such as Abdullah Ibrahim (2001) or Muriungi (2004).

3. Results. Mohamed Amin before the 1984 famine: Postcolonialism and everyday Africa

Mohamed Amin came from an immigrant Pakistani family, whose parents migrated to Kenya for the construction and maintenance of the railway between Mombasa and Uganda. From humble origins, Mo’s family settled in the cities of Nakuru and Nairobi, until they were later moved to a railway estate in neighboring Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (Sheikh-Miller, 2015). Prior to independence, both Kenya and Tanzania were living through times of racial segregation and apartheid. Mohamed studied at the Indian Secondary School for Asian Children for immigrants which “–although not oppressive—underscored the contemporary tendency of colonialism and reinforced racial segregation” (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 42).

At the age of 11, Mohamed bought a second-hand Box Brownie camera for 40 shillings, which allowed him to participate in the school’s photographic society, work in the darkroom, and begin publishing his first works in local media. “At 15, he had already been published in the respected and influential [South African] Drum magazine, dedicated to black consciousness” (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 45). And just one year later, Mo secured a job as a photographer for The Nation newspaper for a few days, but disillusioned he left the post… as he also left school against his family’s disapproval in 1960. His parents wanted him to continue his studies to escape poverty (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 48), but Mo was determined to become a professional photographer: “I had to hide my interest in photography from my family because my parents, in particular, are very religious, very orthodox, and taking photographs in Islam is not something that was encouraged, certainly not at that time” (Lawley, 1992).

Against all odds, and with his strong character, at the age of 20, he founded the company Camerapix in Tanzania in 1963 under the sign of “Studio, Press, and Commercial Photography.” An hour later, a disagreement with his first client made him change his mind, replacing the business sign with a new one “Only Press Photography.” As his biographers note, “in a single morning, the enterprising photographer had precisely decided the direction his career would take for the rest of his life” (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 48).

During his first two years of professional activity as a photojournalist, his work focused on both images and press releases that he would send to local media contextualizing the news. Although this work was routine, it allowed Amin to acquire the basic principles of the profession. However, it was during his second stage that he realized he could increase his fees by duplicating his photography and film work (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 49). This is why Mohamed began working with both media at the same time, presenting himself as a cameraman-six (the man with six cameras). At the same time, in the post-colonial era, the world of photojournalism had changed:

Vietnam seemed to establish the superiority of television over still photography; Life collapsed, and photojournalism seemed to come to an end as more and more photographers moved to film and subsequently to video. But television and photojournalism are more complementary than was believed. (Palmer, 1987, p. 244)

Mo also understood both narratives as parallel communication instruments, although there was no doubt for him which medium he considered more challenging in his career: “If I could choose, I would still prefer still images because it’s not just about taking photos: you come back from an assignment, process the film, make the selection, the cropping, the prints, etc. And if it’s for journalistic use, you wire the images” (Tetley, 1988, p. 110).

From 1963 until the end of his life, Mohamed Amin worked as a photographer, cameraman, TV producer-director, and editor of his own agency, Camerapix. His company specialized in news coverage, editing documentaries, TV programs, and photographic books, with the aim of presenting a more nuanced view of the continent to the world (Figure 2). Most importantly, thanks to these publications, Amin was able to show “another image” of Kenya and Africa. Furthermore, from December 1969, Mo began to combine Camerapix with the direction of the Visnews TV Agency in East Africa (“Obituary: Mohamed Amin,” 1996). The relationship with Visnews-Reuters was fruitful for nearly twenty years. When Visnews was not interested in a television news story, Mo offered the story to other agencies and newspapers through Camerapix (provided there were no incompatibilities with the British parent company). For example, Mo also collaborated with Associated Press in the late 1970s and 1980s (“Mohamed Amin, Veteran Photographer, Dies in Plane Crash,” Mohamed, 1996).

Figure 2. The six camera Mo: in the Central African Republic.

3.1. Torture in Tanzania’s paradise: the risks of the profession

When Zanzibar declared independence on 10 December 1963, Mohamed Amin was already professionally trained. At 20 years old, he freelanced as a filmmaker and photographer and captured the evacuation of the last British nationals for the North American CBS channel and news agencies UPIN and Visnews. Additionally, guided by communist rumors during the Cold War era, Mo discovered and filmed spies in Tanzania in September 1965, capturing footage of troops and Soviet ammunition crates. These were European communist instructors training Tanzanian soldiers dressed in Cuban and East German uniforms alongside Russian transport vehicles. “The following day, the London Times published Mo’s report with the footage, while CBS and Visnews enthusiastically distributed the film” (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 59). In a world divided into ideological factions, news of this caliber was juicy for opponents but equally dangerous for the journalist who disseminated it. After the broadcast, Mohamed Amin was arrested and taken to a security cell in Kilimamigu prison in Zanzibar with other political prisoners.

I thought they were going to shoot me. I had never been so scared in my life. It was a situation that I had no control over. I cried out of frustration and hopelessness. I didn’t think I was going to come out of that prison alive. (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 61)

After 27 days of physical and psychological tortures, Mo was accused of spying in Zanzibar for Great Britain and the United States, but he was released thanks to media pressure. Finally, he signed a statement denying having suffered any ill-treatment, and -thirteen kilos lighter- Mohamed was taken to a plane in Dar Salaam with orders for expulsion from the country and destined for Nairobi.

If the future was closing in Tanzania, he only had to move his newly created company Camerapix to his new Kenyan home. On the other hand, Mo became aware of the hardships and risks of the profession with the advent of future dictators and partisan struggles in the incipient post-colonial paradise that Africans were hoping for. Also, in some way, Mohamed Amin had begun to document this social, cultural and political wealth that -on the other side of the ocean- the new American journalism was already advocating to capture reality. As Tom Wolfe pointed out, “the new journalists had all the sixties, obscene, tumultuous, mau-mau, to themselves” (2012: 39). Wolfe, who used the Kenyan expression of the “mau-mau” (referring to the intimidation tactics used by the British against the Kikuyu Mau Mau anti-colonial uprising in 1950), argued that journalists and photojournalists should take advantage of the turmoil and document the realism of the time. Mohamed Amin followed this advice to the letter, traveling with youthful dedication from one conflict to another.

3.2. International exclusives

In 1969, Mohamed Amin had already made a name for himself by publishing his work in the prestigious Life magazine during the riots in Djibouti when he received news on July 5th about the shooting of politician Tom Mboya, the Minister of Economic Development. Mohamed Amin managed to climb into the ambulance with the wounded politician and capture footage and photographs of the aftermath. His visual chronicle of the event traveled abroad, leading him to receive the British Television Cameraman of the Year Award (1969) and a staff position with the Visnews agency after years of collaboration. Additionally, Tom Mboya’s murder marked the beginning of Mo’s prolific career as an author, with 55 publications under Camerapix.

Much of Mo’s professional history was also due to his postcolonial coverage with African dictators such as Bokassa (in the Central African Republic) or Mobutu (Congo). A special case was with Idi Amin Dada Oumee in Uganda, from whom he obtained three exclusive personal interviews: in 1971 for Visnews agency, in 1980 for BBC-Visnews, and in 1985 for the British newspaper Sunday Express. Idi Amin had taken power on 25 January 1971, in Uganda, known as “the pearl of Africa” by Winston Churchill (2004). Idi Amin, a division general, staged a coup while the prime minister, Milton Obote, was away for a meeting of the Organization of African States. After Obote’s overthrow, the international media focus and the journalists’ careers focused on reaching and getting to know the new Ugandan leader in Kampala.

As the country was closed by the military, Mohamed Amin decided to fly to Entebbe airport on a private flight, although the pilot had refused to fly without the authorization of the Ugandan control tower. However, Mo obtained authorization from General Amin himself. Everything indicates that the subordinates who facilitated this direct communication must have thought they were relatives. Thus, a few hours later, Mo filmed the dictator on the streets of Uganda, even taking one of his famous “baths” in the pool, while the rest of the international journalists arrived two days later at the press conference with Idi Amin on January 28th (Associated Press, 1971).

After those photographic sessions, the two Amins chatted for a while, and the Ugandan grew fond of Mo” (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 154) who - once again, through luck and courage - had become “the only photographer allowed in [during the coup] by Idi Amin. His Muslim background allowed him to be the first to photograph and film him,” notes the Mohamed Amin Foundation (2021c: 17). But, despite all this, although “Mo had established a solid working relationship with Idi Amin, Mo always took care to keep his distance from the dictator. (Tetley, 1988, p. 167)

This “interested professional friendship” also continued with the exile of Idi Amin (Figure 3). Tensions and excesses in Uganda resulted in the secret departure of the dictator to Libya in 1980, and from there, to Saudi Arabia, Muslim countries. In the absence and unknown whereabouts of the Ugandan general, the BBC contacted Mo to discover the location of the former dictator, considering that as a Muslim (in reality, a non-practicing Sunni), he would find it easy to locate Idi Amin, who was a Muslim and initially a practicing one. The sources of the photojournalist led him to Jeddah (Saudi Arabia). Thus, he accidentally found one of his bodyguards in the Mosque of Mecca, who took him to Idi Amin himself (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 166). Finally, that same night, they recorded the interview in a hotel, in an exclusive shared by Mo’s Visnews agency and the BBC correspondent (Barrow & Amin, 1980). Later, in July 1982, in response to a request from the British newspaper Sunday Express, Mo visited Idi Amin for the third and last time to complete the series “Where are they now?” (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 167).

Figure 3. Mohamed Amin with Idi Amin in Saudi Arabia.

In summary, Mo’s trajectory demonstrates his professional modus operandi: “… a good news camera operator needs planning, intuition, contacts… and a lot of luck (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 277). Part of my success is due to the fact that I never fully rely on luck, even though I may be accused of having more than my fair share. I make sure to have the right equipment, support, and perhaps most importantly, contacts” (Smith & Amin, 1998, p. 254).

3.3. Publications: A pan-Africanist vision

From the 1960s until the early 1980s, Mohamed Amin experienced the approach of Western media towards Africa with the informative post-colonialism, where the metropolis attempted to maintain ties of union -and at the same time control- over the former colonies, which couldn’t live without the paternalism of the mother country (Harrison, 2015, pp. 18–37). On the one hand, this Western vision had led Mo to some disillusionment and friction with his directors at Visnews due to the orientation of some news stories written from Africa for the Western world, from a Western perspective. But, on the other hand, Mo was aware that he needed the television agency and international media for his own business survival.

Added to this, in the early 1980s, the Visnews television agency changed its informative policy, focusing more on the Middle East and less on African events. For Mohamed Amin, this was a problem because his Camerapix company depended on the work he did for Visnews. This situation forced him to focus on other professional activities, among which photo book editing stood out. The publications allowed for a more personal, individual, pan-Africanist orientation, without the daily urgency of news reporting under Western interests. Thus, Mo edited 55 books with Camerapix, especially in the field of photography and everyday Africa: travels through Pakistan (1984), Tanzania (1984), Nepal (1987); Namibia (1994); Seychelles (1995); Ethiopia (1996), guides to fauna and flora, books about Nairobi, Kenyan magical lands (The Kenyan Beauty, 1984), safaris, tribes (The Last Masai, 1987), among other works (Appendix 1).

In order to carry out the publication of the book Cradle of Mankind (1981), Mo organized what is considered the first circumnavigation of Lake Turkana and its desert in northern Kenya (Figure 4). The objective was to document the life of the six tribes around this alkaline water mass in the Rift Valley, whose one-month trip he undertook in 1980. The book was ready by 1981 and also became a double exhibition in Nairobi and London, the latter inaugurated by the British princess, Alexandra of Kent. In addition, the story of the circumnavigation of Lake Turkana made him worthy of becoming a member of the Royal Geographical Society of London in 1982, “adding his name to the club that includes David Livingstone, Sir John Hunt, and other famous explorers and pioneers” (Tetley, 1988, p. 220).

Figure 4. A boy from Elmolo at Lake Turkana. Photograph included in the book Cradle of Mankind (1981).

Finally, Mo secured other overseas projects in addition to his African publications, traveling, for example, in 1980 to Pakistan to film a documentary about the Aga Khan Architecture Awards. Furthermore, the new military regime of President Zia ul Haq then commissioned him to write the book Journey through Pakistan, which had all the facilities of the state and multiple means, including a helicopter for aerial views of the considerable local differences, from the lowlands to the highlands in the far north of the country. Thanks to this work, he received the Tamgha-i-Imtiaz decoration, the second-highest civilian honor in Pakistan, equivalent to the title of British knighthood.

4. Conclusions

The most famous work about the famine has overshadowed and almost simplified the rest of Mohamed Amin’s visual body of work produced over nearly 25 years (1960–1984), when at that time Mo was a relevant witness of post-colonial times, with exclusive access to the key political leaders of the new African nations, such as Idi Amin (Uganda), Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Haile Selassie (Ethiopia), etc. Some of his biographers have called him “the eye of Africa” (Tetley, 1988). Precisamente, con ese apelativo on 19 October 2021, the Mohamed Amin Foundation launched the visual exhibition on Google Arts & Culture titled “Mohamed Amin: Eye of Africa”.

The global impact of his work on the famine is unquestionable, but it is worth noting that his complete and preserved work at the foundation bearing his name is one of the largest historical photographic archives on Africa. One of the motives could be that after Mohamed Amin’s death in 1996, the archives of the Mohamed Amin Foundation were closed to the public “for digitisation and archival cataloguing” (The Mohamed Amin Foundation, 2021). This has prevented access to the photographic and film documentary body of work. Until then, access to the visual body of work was only possible through his books, some television reports, and articles in newspapers or on the internet.

It can be said that if the informative impact of Ethiopia increased and multiplied his work rapidly with professional awards and accolades, it was because there was a first Mohamed Amin before the 1984 famine, with prestige, merits, and exclusives with Western media, as well as international distinctions, such as membership in the Royal Geographical Society of the United Kingdom (since 1982) and the Tamgah-i-Imtiaz Order Award (T.I.), the second most important civil decoration in Pakistan (1983) before 1984. For the first time in East Africa, a photojournalist became a celebrity, a fame that went beyond his profession.

In short, this research has shown the existence and professional recognition of Mohamed Amin beyond the Ethiopian famines. Nevertheless, Mohamed Amin cannot be understood at his public peak in Ethiopia if his ascending personal trajectory that leads to the informative drama of 1984 is not glimpsed first. Thus, the famine and the hope of African colonialism are two sides of the same coin in Mohamed Amin, who can only be understood without stereotypes, in the context of a Kenyan, Pan-African, and universal perspective made from Africans for Africa.

This study opens up future lines of research. In order to carry out the analysis, methodologies previously used in the study of photographs will be taken into account, such as the one proposed by Rodríguez and Dimitrova (2016), which addresses the analysis of visual framing through four stages and which have been used in various scientific literature (Tshuma & Sibanda, 2022). Some focus on Mohamed Amin as a key figure in photojournalism and the image he disseminated of Africa through the Western media for whom he worked. Other research can be related to current trends in African visual studies (Vokes, 2020), which are interested in the way official and/or commercial photographs circulated within this continent and were distributed to other countries.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ismael Martínez-Sánchez

Ismael Martínez-Sánchez, Bachelor in Information Sciences (University of Navarra) and Master in Philosophy (Strahmore University) is doing his PHD on Mohamed Amin in Kenya, where he has been living since 2015. He has also worked as an international photojournalist in more than 30 countries in corporate and humanistic communication on the visual anthropology of conflicts and hopes.

Tamara Antona-Jimeno

Tamara Antona-Jimeno is Assistant Professor at the Department of Journalism and Global Communication at the Complutense University of Madrid. She teaches History of Spanish Journalism and History of Social Communication. She has taught on the Bachelor's Degree in Communication (Communication Theory) and on the International Diploma in Research Culture at the UNIR. She has participated in competitive research projects related to the history of communication, in particular she is a specialist in the area of television and Social Networks and Hate Speech

Notes

1. It can be viewed at: https://artsandculture.google.com/project/mohamed-amin-archive

Appendix 1.

Photo books by Mohamed Amin

Table

Before 1984	After 1984
Tom Mboya: A Photographic Tribute (1969)	We Live in Pakistan (1984)
Kenya’s World Beating Athletes (1972)	The Beauty of Kenya (1984)
East African Safari Rally Comes of Age (1973)	Journey Through Tanzania (1984)
Mzee Jomo Kenyatta (1973)	Guide Insight, Kenya (1985)
One Man, One Vote (1975)	Karachi (1986)
The Flying Sikh (1975)	The Beauty Of The Kenya Coast (1986)
Legendary Africa (1977)	Railway Across the Equator: The Story of the East African Line (1986)
Nimeiri’s Sudan (1978)	Journey Through Nepal (1987)
Pilgrimage to Mecca (1978)	The Last of the Maasai (1987)
Lust to Kill (1979)	Lahore (1988)
Mecca (1980)	Defenders of Pakistan (1988)
Cradle of Mankind (1981)	Kenya : The Magic Land (1988)
Journey Through Pakistán (1982)	African Wildlife Safaris (1989)
Run, Rhino, Run (1982)	Spectrum guide to Kenya (1989)
Journey Through Kenya (1983)	Spectrum guide to Pakistan (1989)
We Live in Kenya (1983)	The Roof of the World (1989)
Ivory Crisis (1983)	Journey Through Zimbabwe (1990)
The Beauty of Pakistan (1983)	Spectrum guide to the Seychelles (1991)
Portraits of Africa (1983)	Spectrum guide to de Zimbabwe (1991)
	On God’s Mountain: The Story of Mount Kenya (1991)
	Journey Through Maldivas (1991)
	The Beauty of Sheychelles (1992)
	Spectrum guide to Tanzania (1992)
	The Beauty of Amboseli (1993)
	The Beauty of Ngorongoro (1993)
	Spectrum guide to Maldives (1993)
	Journey Through Namibia (1994)
	Spectrum guide to Namibia (1994)
	Spectrum guide to Jordan (1994)
	Journey Through Seychelles (1995)
	Spectrum guide to de Ethiopia (1995)
	Spectrum guide to South Africa(1995)
	Aldabra, World Heritage Site (1995)
	Journey Through Ethiopia (1996)
	Spectrum guide to Zambia (1996)