Travelling Images: Photography and the Poetics of Visual Peace in Kenya

Abstract

This article examines two significant but critically neglected photographic interventions, Kenya Burning (2008) and Picha Mtaani (2009–2013), which represent the 2007–2008 post-election violence in Kenya. It investigates why photographers and curators aestheticize violence and how this shapes photography’s capacity to function as a medium of public memory and peace. The article argues that Kenya Burning reproduces a paradigm of negative peace by relying on conventional documentary realism and a forensic logic that makes violence hypervisible without enabling critical reflection on its structural causes. Picha Mtaani attempts to transform spectators into participant-witnesses through itinerant exhibitions and public dialogue; however, its reliance on the aesthetics of shock and uglification limits sustained ethical engagement. Drawing on South African photographer Santu Mofokeng’s concept of fictioning, the article proposes an alternative visual ethic grounded in collaborative narration and interpretive openness, reframing the aftermath of violence as a productive site for reimagining the aesthetics of visual peace.