Archives of Idi Amin

Edgar C. Taylor, Nelson A. Abiti, Derek R. Peterson, Richard Vokes

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This report describes the official photographic archives of Idi Amin's government held by the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC). During his reign from 1971 to 1979, Idi Amin embraced visual media as a tool for archiving the achievements of populist military rule as his government sought to reorient Ugandans' relationship with the state. Only a handful of the resulting images were ever printed or seen, reflecting the regime's archival impulse undergirded by paranoia of unauthorized ways of seeing. The UBC's newly opened collection of over 60,000 negatives from Amin's photographers, alongside files at the Uganda National Archives, offers the first comprehensive opportunity to study the Ugandan state under Amin's dictatorship through the lens of its own documentarians.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)413-427
Number of pages15
JournalHistory in Africa: an annual journal of method
Volume48
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2021

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