Visual Anthropology Review also seeks photo essays.

The word limit is 2,500 words, and the number of images should be appropriate to the essay itself. Submission of work that includes drawing and painting in addition to, or instead of, still photography is also encouraged. As a guideline, a photo essay consists of a number of photographs with written text directly related to the photos. The author can present the photos in a particular order or randomly ordered, before or after the text. The author can also place the photos within the text. The images will thus contribute an overall collection of photographs to the essay. The author should address in the written text the question of Why photography? The essay should reflect on the content of the images and the making of the images the cultural and historical context of their making and the aesthetics of the images. Finally, the authors text should reflect on how text and image interact with one another, perhaps on the tensions and affinities that might

My Attempt at a Photo Essay

The assignment: A photo essay consisting of 24 images, with captions, plus an abstract. For a journal special issue on Africa and transition.

Beauty, Change and Home-Making in Western Kenya

The building, renovation and decoration of home are central to the ethics, etiquette and aesthetics of the lives of people in the rural areas of Western Kenya. Homes are highly visible structures that provide sites and occasions for social interaction, criticism and commentary on a daily basis. Furthermore, the actual practice and technique of building homes solidifies alliances between husbands and wives, between in-laws, and between the living and the dead. The Kiswahili term maridadi describes the pleasing visual beauty of a home. This term condenses the ideas of ethics, etiquette and aesthetics made real in the building of a home. The groomed appearance of a home materializes and broadcasts the good manners of its dwellers in a way that is solely visual. Maridadi is the result of a particular approach to managing the appearance of the dwelling as well as to the gardening of the space surrounding the dwelling. Local discourse on home building highlights the recent influx of new materials and the increasing difficulties in maintaining the pleasing appearance of homes. These changes include the replacement of mud with cement walls and grass with tin roofs, and new financial obligations such as the paying of school fees.

The walls of a house are built from the inside. Women from the village of Madivini showing students from James Madison University how to work with this mix of mud.

The surfaces of the home require regular re-finishing with a mix of dung, clay and mud when they begin to crack, become dusty and dirty peoples clothes. This house-keeping skill typically belongs to women. The refinished surfaces are ngaathey shine.

Grass roofs with tin roofs in the background. Grass insulates homes. During heavy down-pours, the noise of the rain on tin roofs will bring conversations to a halt.

Prior to cement and tin, women and men, linked together by local relations, cooperated on the building and maintenance of walls and roofs, respectively. With the arrival of these new building materials, professionals assume this work.

Twelve years ago, the roof was grass. There are mud walls underneath the cement.

On the left is an outdoor kitchen (one that is separate from the main house). After a woman completes the building of this kitchen, her husband will rarely again eat food prepared in his mothers kitchen.

After her husband dies, a woman will fill up the doorway through which he used to pass, and cut a new door through which she will now move as a widow.

Cement first appeared in this area in the form of graves. Traditionally, graves face the front of the home. The home is located with future grave sites in mind.

Maridadi- well-groomed and even lawn and hedge-rows; smooth walls; straight edges on the corners of the house; maize plants, in the background, all growing at about the same height.

Drawn flowers enhance the maridadi qualities of a home. Flowers best represent the sense of balance and clarity of line that is at the core of this aesthetic of home-making.

When people tell stories about their homes, they often reach a point where they stop and begin to narrate what hindered the making of their homes. The most frequently cited obstacle is the burden of having to pay increasing school fees.

Part of you. From the start. Cement offers the romance of permanency.

Paint is the medium of professionals--it finishes walls permanently.

Painted buildings in Kakamega

The drawing of flowers on the walls of homes is less common today than it was in the past. However, flower imagery still adorns homes in the form of embroidered table cloths, napkins and furniture covers.

The lines on the cement wall of a Quaker meeting house suggest the shape of the bricks that lie under the cement and evoke the look of maridadi.

Those who previously drew flowers now find work designing artwork for store-fronts in the marketplace of Madivini

Members of cross churches, such as the African Prophetic Church, draw crosses on the fronts of their homes.

A Catholic household.

Faith without action is dead [see James 2:17]

Children decorate their homes at Christmastime. By 2010, this mud wall had been covered in bricks and the imagery was gone. Bricks are not smooth enough to serve as surfaces for drawing.

This gentlemen used to work in Nairobi. He is now retired. Each morning he wakes up and sweeps his compound. Only when his garden is tidy does he sit down for breakfast.

People walking by see the pile of freshly swept leaves and the tidy compound, and know that the old man is doing well and staying strong.

The home is greatly admired for its beauty. The owner recently passed away and his neighbors doubt that his grandson will be able to maintain it.

The main editor who passes the issue sent back a question about your essay. Let me say first of all that I understand if you decide not to put in the work she is requesting. I like your piece, but she is concerned and says the article looks at Western Kenya through anthropological lenses that may be pushing stereotypes about Africa in an age when there is a more balanced picture to present in the area of architecture. She requests that we provide an image of Kenya that is not solely rural or poverty stricken. (She is an art historian with expertise in architecture and she is actually in Kenya as we speak on research). So she asks that we consider delivering an essay that covers the gamut of architecture in Kenya.

Photographer: Zwelethu Mthethwa