Magnum Blog / Ugandan Dispatch No.1 – The Road

Ugandan Dispatch No.1 – The Road

© Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos Traveling by road is simultaneously one of the great frustrations and pleasures of working in Uganda. The only real way to get around is by bus. The journey starts early in the morning at the bus station, which is often a muddy, confusing collection of loiterers, vendors, opportunists, thieves, the unemployed, and a few bus company employees shouting destinations. The buses never leave before they are full, and usually they're overflowing by the time they teeter out of the station. Still, no matter what time I arrived, there always seemed to be a two-hour wait until the bus left. The best way to pass the time was to chat with the other passengers, who were usually curious and amused that a white man was traveling with them. Inevitably, the first question would be about whom I was voting for in the upcoming election. When I expressed my enthusiasm for Obama, the friendship could really begin. From there we would gossip freely about our job, family, relationships, politics and anything else to pass the time. Ugandans are generally very warm and open people, and there was always a lot of teasing and laughter. When the bus finally filled, the engine was coaxed to a start and it began a complicated dance to leave the bus park, weaving between haphazardly parked buses, hundreds of jostling people moving in different directions and shouting vendors eager to make a last sale. © Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos Life in Uganda happens very close to the road, which is often the only consistent stream of income for the small, forgotten towns that line the routes between the major cities. The buses stop frequently on the roadside, and instantly a mass of people sprint towards them with their goods, pressing them up to the windows and shouting prices. One time I traveled with a Ugandan friend named Salle, who insisted on buying something at every stop. First he bought a stick of grilled chicken livers. At the next stop Salle grabbed a jerry can of fresh milk, clucking happily at the bargain price. The next stop specialized in live chickens held up to the window by their bound claws. After a brief negotiation, Salle decided on a fat, frightened specimen, which he stuffed under his seat and for the next five hours flapped its wings and pecked at our ankles. Salle became very eager to eat that chicken by the end of the bus ride. © Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos Sometimes bus trips could be extremely frustrating. The roads are full of potholes, forcing the bus driver to swerve constantly to avoid them. But there are too many to avoid all of them, and when hit at speed the old buses give a mighty jump. I've hit my head untold times on the roofs of the smaller buses, to the amusement of most of the passengers who instinctively know when to duck. On my last day in Uganda I was making my way back to Kampala to catch my flight home. I was coming from Karamoja, a remote region in the northeast corner of the country. There was only one bus a day leaving for the capital, and the journey was supposed to take ten hours. Four hours into the ride, we hit a massive pothole. Large chunks of the suspension flew off and the bus swerved to a halt. After a bit of surprised murmuring we debarked and sat under a tree. The driver pretended to fix the wheel by banging on it with a wrench, and the conductor carrying the fare money hopped on the one motorcycle in the village, never to be seen again. For two hours we waited on the remote roadside for any sort of vehicle, which finally came in the form of an empty truck heading to the next town to pick up produce. After a scramble we all managed to fit in the truck bed. From there we transferred to a minibus, which drove around town for another hour looking for more passengers. Eight hours into the trip, I finally arrived at the regional hub and found a bus going to Kampala, still seven hours away. Thankfully, that trip passed relatively uneventfully, and I arrived back at my friends place with just enough time to pack my bags, take a shower and head onward to the airport. I present a selection of photographs taken on the road. On each bus ride I photographed constantly. I was becoming frustrated by the way mannerisms change when people know they are being photographed, and enjoyed the purity of relying on my gut, and having just one chance to catch slivers of daily life passing by. Links » Peter van Agtmael's Magnum Portfolio » Peter van Agtmael's Website » Interview with Peter van Agtmael on Conscientious » Interview with Peter van Agtmael on Smithsonian

david bowen

great peter.. thanks.

my favorite place to catch local buses is in india.. where the decaying buses seem to be actually held together by the swath of humanity clinging on to every window.. seat.. available metal edge there is.. it can be exhausting, fun, enlightening and depressing, (with dysentery), all at once :ø)

i love the angle possible from the bus window as well.. the view from 2 meters up is impossible to get by a roadside any other way - not from a taxi or motorbike.
the empty gaze in your general direction, from people waiting at the roadside and looking at the bus, delivers a sense of time passing.. the top photo is almost surreal in the way the front row have chosen to wait.. on a random chair.. standing and leaning as they are.

like it.
cheers
david

mike

Hello from New York! I love your photos. I have seen Uganda on my travel channel. It is nice to look at photos of places I can never visit.

Emil Ihrig

Peter, I enjoyed reading your blog, but find your photos from the bus lacking a center of interest. If you didn't accompanied the images with verbiage I wouldn't of had a clue as to what was transpiring.

katia roberts

peter--

there seems to be a disconnect between the photos you present here and your text.
it would've been nice to see a packed to brimming bus or the vendors you speak
of pressed up to the windows trying to sell their wares.

Peter van Agtmael

david and mike....thanks for the kind words....

Emil- I understand your point. The reason for the series was an experiment to get away from those traditional photographic concepts. In this case I had one lens, one possible composition, and one opportunity to grab the shot. I thought that was a good way of capturing my impressions of the place without too much artifice.

Katia- Good point you raise. I thought about the pictures matching the text, but in the end decided I wanted to just write a little story that had nothing to do with my favorite pictures. I generally don't like when text and pictures overlap too much, as for me they serve two very different roles. Hope it's not too confusing.

david bowen

i like the bruce chatwin -photographs and notebooks- style of the text..

Joe

i think there’s a bag a tricks that photographers learn quickly to use; things like exposing for highlights to mask out distracting details, with a kick-back of interesting inky-black graphics… or including the shadows of people you can’t see, but in their place, a heavy sense of narrative…. or frames within frames… and then there’s the good old fashioned juxt.

these techniques are interesting until you’ve seen them enough that you start to recognise the technique over the subject; then they become a bit contrived and almost distracting.

i say this Peter because i think these three images show a heavy departure from this in your style…. ( except for the high count of images you have that make you think ‘w.t.f.’…. i Love those, please Do More Peter.)

But these three images really feel like you said ‘here i am and here’s what i saw, judge it yourself, this contains no artificial flavours or colouring.’

these images need to be viewed as large prints. i can see even at this small size that all the subject are ordered, but on the cusp of collapse, unfortunately these images are too small to read what energy is coming from each of the characters, but so many characters!

the first image i want to walk right in on Peter. you did well to expose for the sky and all the non-sky subject matter; people forget how hard this is until they try this themselves and comeback with blown out skies or no tonality in the subjects. The colours are yummy and do well not to look over-saturated and garish; the people seem to echo the up-beat mood. Loads of things to look at and guess about.

Just the opposite with the second image Peter, i actually want to run right out of that image. There are angry tones and even angrier body language everywhere…. what a brilliant contrast of bus stops seen from a set of eyes that seems to be exactly the same distance off the ground. And you do get an unnerving feeling from this perspective because it’s not one we’re used to seeing life from, we’re typically five feet off the ground our lower if we crouch.

The third image is a great finish to a three image story; it’s ambiguous enough that you spend time decrypting it, but still feels very honest and engaging. i’m sure if someone chances by these three large prints on a wall someday, they would enjoy the time exploring them; no text-based narrative needed.
..

Joe

Peter i take back my initial pigeon-hole feelings about your work and apologise.. i finally got your website to load up... you've way more variety than anyone could hope for on your site… loads more of what i personally like in comparison to what’s in your Magnum edit… matter of fact your Magnum edit really puzzles me now Peter, why the repetition of images like the toilet graffiti when you‘ve so many other gems in your portfolio to show wider scope? War and gore and graffiti is good if that’s all you have, but mate you’re teaming with more in my humble opinion.

Ok, with that off my chest I’m back to your site Peter. Damn even the people that photograph you have some juice! I wish I had any of those images making me look ‘such the business‘.
..

Bob Black

Peter!!! :)))

Damn, what a shame that after a week (intense) of writing and culling together images and words to submit for some grant $$, You decide (finally!) to submit something...and im totally fucking out of words to write, so it'll be a simple comment :))

I gotta come straight with ya'll. I've always loved Peter's work (before he got the nod from Magnum) and have ALWAYS "viewed" Peters photographs with his Words. I once joke with him that Peter's words and description of Iraq reminded me of the great work that the extraordinary american vietnamwarpoet/story feeder Tim O'Brien's work. In fact, in many senses, much of what Peter has written and photographed have reminded me and contained the same directness and elegance, and through that wise simplicity, the same eloquence of O'bRien's stories about his life in Nam...all the books....

I love this post, because rather than out of kilter, i feel both: the colorful traveloque (how to write about Africa in the shadow of Kapuscinsky?), yet give me some gorgeous Chatwin and the photographs...and in many sense the supplement one another: the type, clean clausterphobic sense of the prose and the open, dreamy pics....i never want words that explain photos and i never like photos that explain words, and having spent a good bit of time on rickety buses as well, the stories that Peter shared just warmed me....

and then that magnificent final photograph....

the rush of mud, the light of the bus lights that is illuminating the mud on the road so that it turns into Red Curry, the waning light, the 2 figures waiting the approach, the hint of the light of the sky on the clean (like pool) pot-holed drenched water, on the weight of the verdant grass...lets not go to the dogs tonight ;))).....

i really love this final photograph, alot, because it speaks to me of what still chimes about images...the solitary moment, not the collision, of something preternatural that still escapes words....the 1st photo speaks to me of the same story of Peter's stories....but it is the last photo that speaks to me of what there is still not capturable but with language-less lenses, light and blink-of-the-eye ligament....

then again, im prejudiced: i've always dug Peter's stories :))

cheers y'all
running away for a few days...deadlines...

bob

bobblack

that first silly sentence of mine contains a fucking dangling modifier...it wasnt Peter who spent the week " (intense) of writing and culling together images and words to submit for some grant $$," and is not at a loss for words, but yours truly, and ....

anyway, i dig it alot, both the pics and the stories...

cheers
bob

sergio jaén lara

I like Van Agtmael´s work but I think he had to take care about the quality of his photography.
There is no doubt that the contents are perfectly showed in his photos but the aesthetic quality of them are very poor.

peter

My take...after the dust blood and gore, the photographer took a deep breath and had a good time snapping pics from the bus.

Peter van Agtmael

Hey folks...thanks for all your comments!

Joe- Thanks for the kind words and I appreciate you looking so closely at those pictures. I do hope to print them at a bigger size one of these days, and I'll be back in Uganda early next year so the series will keep building...
As for the edit I made for the Magnum page....i wanted to present a distillation of the work on war that I've been doing for the past few years. I've been shooting a lot of other stuff, but that work means the most to me. I'll change it up at some point but for now it feels right.

Bob- Always good to hear from you. Thanks for adding your thoughts. You could have applied that dangling modifier to me too....i've been cranking away on the old grant train myself. Good fun all around. Good luck on em....and congrats to Marina, I saw the post on lightstalkers.....

Sergio- I'm not quite sure I understand your criticism. If you have time to elaborate I'd be curious in what you mean specifically...

Peter- haha. yeah, it felt really good to be in Uganda. Those months were a welcome break from the last few years. Still, I focused on some documentary projects as well which will be the focus of upcoming dispatches on the blog....(shameless plug...)

Have a good weekend, all...

peter

sergio jaen lara

In other words Peter, I love the pictures you take but I think that you are not taking care enough about the colours, plasticity, tones, may be this photos are good enough for a newspaper but you can extract more rendition from those scenes. May be these photos are not the best examples but I am speaking about your whole work (the one I have found in your web)

twojeanonse

Thanks for very interesting article.

nigel amies

Today's my comment day so here we go. When I look at the examples shown here of Peter's work I do wonder how the guy got into Magnum. These are very unspectacular, or even particularly interesing photos never mind the supposed lack or otherwise of technical skills. With a digital camera who needs skills? - assuming it was a digital camera he used. The pictures shown here are pretty much what anyone on a local bus in any third world situation could have done - and maybe done a whole lot better. What was he doing in Uganda anyway? No mention of that.
Then I look at his other work in Iraq and Afganistan and with the after effects on those involved and you can see why Magnum wanted him. That's more like the stuff Magnum got famous for doing - more in the tradition of the Robert Capa, James Nachtway school of photography. magnum need at least a few people crazy enough to put themselves in war situations. But war photogs in my opinion are not necessarily the best examples to judge the art by and I've ofen felt they get away with average pictures mainly because of the situation they were made in. I'm gald to see that Magnum is now taking in a more diverse group of people with diverse interests and ways of seeing. There is thankfully after all still a lot of other stuff going on apart from war.

Bob Black

Peter :)))

sorry for the nearly incomprehensible comment ;))...brain fatigue....good luck too on those grants...and i've passed on the congrats to Mrs. B too :)))....cant wait to see and read more dispatches....:))

cheers
running
bob

raamatupidamine

i have to say it's quite amazing that they really do live like that.

Best Regards,

Raamatupidamine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubjqUP0nTeE

benjamin Thomas

I really like this work. Out of interest why do you feel pictures should always look saturated Sergio? Peter keep rocking it. you know robert frank did a series out of a bus window? just remembered when i saw this. peace, Ben.

Emil Ihrig

Yes Benjamin, and if my memory serves me correctly Robert Frank's images didn't require elaborate verbiage to explain what they were all about. Similarly, the images of the likes of HCB, Eugene Smith, Elliot Erwitt and many other masters of photojournalism used their cameras/eyes to tell their stories and left the pen and paper to the wordsmiths and critics.

Forgive me, maybe I'm experiencing a senior moment, but I long to see more imagery done in the style presented by the Magnum photographers of the past. . . . after all is said and done "a picture is worth a thousand words" if crafted with insight. :0)

Peter van Agtmael

Hi...

Sergio- I think the web might not be the best place to judge the quality of the pictures....they appear a lot flatter than they are in reality. You are right though that the colors are generally muted. I like to keep the scenes close to how I saw them.

Nigel- Thanks for your comments. I don't quite understand some of your points though. What do you mean by the lack of technical skills? As for the photos being generic; I haven't seen a series of similar photos but by all means I'd be curious. Certainly I realize shooting pictures from vehicles isn't a unique idea but the roads are a bit too bouncy to sit and read and I quite enjoy taking pictures. As for what I was doing in Uganda, stay tuned for the next few blog postings...

Benjamin- I appreciate the kind words. I haven't seen the Frank series...do you know where I might find it?

Emil- Thanks for following up. It's interesting for me to hear these things. After all, six months ago only my grandmother cared to give her opinion about my work.

The stories actually have very little to do with the specific pictures... I tend to write stories about the information not contained in the picture. I also admire the photographers you mention, but I have a lot of frustrations about the limits of photography, so I choose to write as well. I've never quite understood the 'a thousand words' cliche. What does it mean to you?

Incidentally, there are also many great photographers that choose to write extensively as well... It's a personal choice at the end of the day, and there really is no right and wrong in the matter. I'm just doing what's right for me, which is all I can do....

Emil Ihrig

Peter:

To me, the saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words" means just what it says. Of course, this only applies if the image is powerful enough to stimulate certain feelings in the viewer. One image
that comes to mind is the powerful image (The Pieta') that Eugene Smith took in Japan of a little girl in her mother's arms who was afflicted with severe mercury poisoning. The feelings that this image evokes, I dare say would require many written words to express adequately.

Peter, let me say again that I enjoyed reading your blog, but have a problem with the images that accompanied the words. Another way of expressing my thoughts is that I feel your writing overshadowed the images. And I think that if images are strong enough unto themselves they shouldn't require all that many words to elucidate.

sergio jaen lara

That's right Peter, nothing like the prints in order to observe the qualities of a photo.
Congratulations for your work.

nigel amies

Peter, the reference to 'technical skills' was in response to a previous writer's comment as much as my own personal distain for the auto-everything of digitalisation. I'm sure you have whatever tech skills you need but I just didn't feel the pictures were special in any way. That's OK, if you enjoyed doing it. I too sometimes do things like that when I can't get closer because I'm hopelesly couped up in some overcrowded bus full of peasants and their chickens and afraid someone will steal my seat, or my cameras. But maybe, and perhaps unfairly, I just hope for something more inspiring from a Magnum guy.
I guess you've been chasing the Lord's Army up there in northern Uganda. Good luck.