Nkinzingabo is telling the Rwandan story through photography

Jacques Nkinzingabo describes his style of photography as “creative, narrative, quirky, soulful, memorable and magical”. But that’s not all. His photography, in a broad aspect, focuses primarily on political, social and cultural issues, and their link to the radical transformations of the human condition in time and space. Overall, his photography is an exercise in attempting to trace the passing of time and development from the rich red soils of the country’s fertile countryside, to the hard tarmac streets and infrastructure boom that today characterize wider Kigali. Particularly, his works tackle head-on the complex reality of human labor and the environmental conditions evolving over time, using the images he captures as some form of visual confrontation. Nkinzingabo usually works on short and long-term personal projects, in which those subjects are addressed. He says that the main distinguishing feature of his representations is the attention to detail he lends to each portrait, “in which the expression of the characters revile their likeness and personality, making us travel through bodies that contain a vast inner reality and the experience of reality itself.” “In my projects I use a variety of techniques and photographic processes,making my works consistent with the subject matter and its artistic identity”, he further reveals. His photography is conspicuous and in-your-face, with the capacity to invade the viewers’ hearts and capture their feelings. The subjects he addresses come from different times, states of mind, surroundings, people and their stories that unfold over his eye, seeking what still remains unknown inside him.” A portrait from the Rwanda, My Beauty series. (Courtesy) For him, working with the ghosts of society as the main characters of his photographs is a long story, dating back to the time when he was a street-side DJ mixing music on the streets of Nyabugogo Market. He considers himself “a ghost of society, one that would have disappeared in the city if photography had not intruded on my way, as a child growing up with my mother.” Perhaps it is this experience that triggered in the then upcoming visual artiste the foundations of a nonconformity lifestyle, in which he uses photography to communicate his experience with human greed, seeing the weakest generate the wealth of the strongest, with human misery as their unique compensation. “What motivates me to go out and photograph is, obviously, the people and their stories, because I strongly believe in people, and in photography as a tool for social change.” It’s against this background that the photographer recently created the project, Rwanda, My Beauty a not-for-profit documentary photography and exhibition project that aims to showcase the different moments in Rwanda and the country’s gripping story; achievements, and the fruits of various development programs of the government, NGOs and private sector to the people of Rwanda. It will take place sometime in August. A portrait from the Walking Through Time project. (Courtesy) After Rwanda, My beauty, he will embark on the project, Walking Through Time, for which he has already accumulated a sizeable amount of pictures from across the country. In Walking Through Time, some of whose gripping images I managed to flip through, Nkinzingabo turns the focus of his lens to ordinary Rwandans’ feet, “to try and capture Africans’ original means of transport, and their physical connection with the land.” He continues: “Large swathes of Africa have a culture of walking. By necessity, people travel on foot to trade and exchange things in rural areas of Rwanda. It’s not uncommon for individuals to walk up to ten kilometers to trade goods”, explains Nkinzingabo, before concluding that, “Walking Through Time is a study of transport by foot in Rwanda.” In the project he tries to capture well-traveled and worn feet that show how that connection with the land, over time, has left its indelible physical imprint on ordinary Rwandans’ feet. “I always search for the beauty within people, that special something in their eyes that makes them who they are,” he explains: “I try to show this in my pictures. This takes time and it takes a deeper understanding of people.” Nkinzingabo currently lives and works in Kigali, a city to which he and his family relocated from the Southern Province in search of better fortunes after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Cultural dance. (Courtesy) He started his journey as photographer in 2009, and by 2013, was already doing it at a professional level with leading local magazines and websites like Igihe, Umuhanzi, Rumalex, Ijwi rya Bose, and different local NGOs. In 2014 he attended an online workshop of photography at Lesley University Boston. After finishing high school he enrolled for online lessons in Fine Art at Lesley/Boston for 1 month, “and that is when I fell in love with the magic of photography.” At that point, he returned to Kigali to get a more practical grip of the technical aspects of photography. After completing high school, he worked as a photographer in mixed media, editing videos and doing photography. Through all of these years he had a few people advise him to specialize in modeling photography, although he was reluctant to go that route. “I was rather reluctant to call myself a creative photographer as I believed there was a certain stigma attached to this. Then I started looking abroad and realized that my creative approach to contemporary photography was in line with what was happening overseas.”

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Nkinzingabo is telling the Rwandan story through photography