Priya Ramrakha

This is the first publication to explore the work of Priya Ramrakha (1935-1968), the pioneering Kenyan photojournalist whose archive was recovered after over forty years. Hailing from an activist family of journalists, Ramrakha was one of the rare African photographers to chronicle the anti-colonial and post-independent struggles across Africa and one of the first to be employed by Time/LIFE. His iconic images defied stereotype, censorship and editorial demand, and captured key moments ranging from Mau Mau in the early 1950s to Africa's independence movements through the 1960s. Ramrakha's pan-African lens witnessed moments of political resistance by everyday people and major political figures in Africa and the civil-rights era in the United States, from Jomo Kenyatta and Tom Mboya to Miriam Makeba and Martin Luther King Jr. His work was cut short when he was killed in crossfire covering Biafra's front lines in 1968.
The work of Priya Ramrakha, pioneer among African photojournalists, and one of the first to be employed by Time/LIFE
Priya Ramrakha (1935 - 2 October 1968) was a Kenyan photojournalist of Indian background and one of the first Africans to be given a contract by Life and Time magazines. After his education at the Art Center College of Los Angeles (arranged by Eliot Elisofon), Ramrakha began work at Life. In 1963, Ramrakha returned to Africa to cover the independence movement in his native Kenya as one of East Africa's first indigenous photojournalists. Ramrakha went on to cover political and military movements across Africa. In 1968, while covering the Nigerian Civil War with CBS correspondent Morley Safer, he was killed in an ambush near Owerri by Biafran soldiers.
Erin Haney is a writer, curator and Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg and the Smithsonian Institution.
Shravan Vidyarthi is a photographer and filmmaker based in Nairobi and New York.
Paul Edward Theroux (born April 10, 1941) is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best-known work is The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). He has published numerous works of fiction, some of which were adapted as feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast, which was adapted for the 1986 movie of the same name.