Mobile people, phones and photography: Somali visual practices in Nairobi's Eastleigh estate

Abstract

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.

Eyes on the ground and eyes in the sky: Security narratives, participatory visual methods and knowledge production in ‘danger zones’

“…Photo studios were once prominent features of high streets but have largely disappeared in many urban centres. At the same time, the increased prevalence of camera phones and social media has precipitated wider digital shifts in photography’s function, from the memorialization of events to modes of conversational communication (Carrier, 2019). These trends raise questions about how participants might engage with photovoice as a technique in societies where smartphone photography is playing a new role in communicative practices.…”

Places of Otherness

“…Th e current MP for Kamukunji-the constituency of which Eastleigh is a part-has also advocated for the estate, and is part of a broader group of Kenyan Somali politicians who have infl uence at the highest level. Somalis are no longer marginal in Kenya, politically and economically, and infl uential fi gures in Eastleigh are also active on social media and mainstream media to promote the estate and its business (Carrier 2019;Hassan 2019).…”