Boniface Mwangi

Boniface Mwangi was born in 1983 and grew up in Nairobi. He became a staff photographer for The Standard, one of Kenya's main newspapers.

After the disputed presidential election of December 2007, violence between supporters of rival candidates and ethnic communities killed more than a thousand people and displaced hundreds of thousands. Mwangi photographed it from the first days, and some of his images were too violent for newspapers to print. His work from those months won him CNN's African Photojournalist of the Year award, which he received in 2008 and 2010.

Convinced that Kenyans needed to see what had happened so that it would not happen again, he created Picha Mtaani ("street photos"), a travelling exhibition shown in towns across the country. Picha Mtaani was supported by the United Nations and focused on reconciliation through photographs and debate. PAWA254, a space in Nairobi for artists, journalists and activists, was founded in 2010 according to one source and in 2012 according to another. He has since become one of Kenya's best-known activists, campaigning against corruption and police violence. In 2017 he stood for the Starehe constituency seat in parliament for his Ukweli Party and lost to the musician Charles Njagua Kanyi, known as Jaguar; his arrest that year over a protest with pigs outside parliament was reported by CNN.

How to look at the 2007–08 pictures: they are evidence before they are art. Look at who is in the frame and who is not, and at what the photographer chose to stand close to; Mwangi has said that Kenyans needed to see what happened so that it would not happen again, and the street exhibition was designed to put that evidence in public places. That reading is this site's own.

Where to see the work

Noorderlicht, the Dutch photography organisation, has a profile of his work, and PAWA254 in Nairobi is the place to ask about current shows and talks. See also Mohamed Amin and our list of African photographers.