Interview: Mumbi Muturi
By Lia J. Latty
Published September 9th, 2022
Did you always know you wanted to be a creative and a photographer?
MUMBI: Not a photographer, but I think I always wanted to be a creative. In school I played the flute and I took art classes, but I didn’t have the patience or maybe the people to help me through it. I really feel like I could’ve been a great artist. When I went to college I wanted to do art, music and dance. Those were my three things. My father told me that he’s not wasting his money on no “fru fru” things. I needed to get a job. You know, it’s very strange that he did that because my father kind of had this idea that women were wives, like we didn’t need a career, but still at the same time, he wouldn’t let me do what I wanted to do. I finished college, I struggled with depression the whole time now that I look back on it, and then I lived in the US for a while, just doing odd jobs, not anything serious. I came back home and I just worked where I could, either with my family or I did customer service. I’ve done mostly customer driven stuff. Then when I had my kids I stopped working because my husband didn’t want me to work, but at some point I realized that I was slowly going to lose my head and I started making cakes and I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I did it for eight years until it became too stressful because customers are lost anyway. Actually, my photography journey started because I wanted to take better pictures of my cakes. That was it. I was given a camera and I tried with that.
I used to fiddle with a DSLR, just a digital point and shoot, trying to learn about aperture, and there was this lady called the Pioneer Woman. She used to have this blog way back when that explained how to take pictures, how to control ISO, what your aperture was, what your shutter speed was. I learned most things there. Then I went for a digital camera and I took pictures of my cakes and my kids. Then I went on a trip, I don’t even know how I ended up on that trip. It was madness. I was in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of photographers. There weren’t a lot, and there still aren’t a lot of female photographers, especially landscape. They used to do a review of the images that were taken over the trip, and I kind of got this sense there were superstars amongst the guys. I told myself, okay, I’m gonna show my pictures. They were silent in the room. I was like, why aren’t they talking? I’ve never done a review of my images before, I’ve never shown them. They were surprised at how good they were, and that’s how it started. I relieved myself by being a stay-at-home mom, all my bills were paid. I haven’t had to hustle, but 2020 was the year that I said no, I need to earn my own money. Now I’m making money through photography and I’m really happy about that.
What inspirations influence your work?
MUMBI: Many people have asked me this, but I didn’t go to art school. I didn’t know about photography. I didn’t think that I was ever going to be a photographer. I didn’t read the books. I didn’t stalk my favorite photographer or anything like that. My first series was about men in flowers. I think it’s the garden that I live in, the trees, flowers, nature, just being outside. That’s what influences my work. You’ll always find a leaf somehow, it will make its way into an image. I do very little studio work. I’m usually outside in natural light. There are questions that I ask myself about what our rules are in society, you know, what does strength look like? What does weakness look like? What is beautiful? I’ll think of something later at night and I’ll draw it out. There’s something that I wanted to work on, which is women worshiping their own bodies. I’ve got a million ideas about. I just think that we don’t worship our bodies. We should. Ultimately it’s just life experiences or conversations with friends. That’s where a lot of my inspiration comes from.
What is your process like when you’re working with the people you photograph?
MUMBI: I don’t want to sound completely fru fru and crazy, but it’s almost like when I want to do something, the universe will conspire to bring me the model that I need for it. You know what I mean?. The photo shoot that I did yesterday, I had called a friend and I said, you know, I need a male model. He asked me what I wanted to do. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. He asked me, what does he need to look like? There was a female model that I had worked with and I said, I want a male version of her, and then I found him. He was somebody that I followed. I didn’t realize. He came in and he was exactly the energy that I needed. During the shoot we listened to Beyonce’s new album Renaissance, and at some point THIQUE came on, which I hadn’t even gotten to that song. I have a habit of listening to one song that I love a million times, so it can take me six to nine months to get through a whole album, but THIQUE came on and he was like, “Put it louder! This is my song!” So there’s that energy and also music. It’s the person, it’s the music, it’s the vibes. It’s 60% planning and 40% on the day, I just wanna see what the person brings. I shoot until they show themselves. I give them that space to show themselves and that’s what creates the images that I want.
Shoes on the Table series
How do you navigate the world of contemporary photography?
MUMBI: I used to apply for stuff and then I decided that before I apply, I wanted to have a look at who won. You know what I mean? I think there’s a richness in the simplicity of the African, you know, we don’t need to do a whole bunch of things. That’s how I feel. I feel that there’s a richness in the simplicity of how we do things, so when I see a lot of work that is being touted as the next new thing, I don’t understand it. I know what I want to create, and I hope that there’s people out there who appreciate it. That’s it, because it’s not just what you create. It’s also who sees you and how loud you can shout, and I’m not a loud shouter. I wish I was a loud shouter. I don’t know how to navigate that world.
How do you define your relationship with photography?
MUMBI: It has changed so much. There was a time when it was my only outlet to create and that was it. I wanted to do it all the time. It was like a drug almost, and now it’s a lot more tempered. I sometimes worry because I’m not falling in love with it. I’m trying to be more planful so that my relationship is much more stable, so that I’m not jumping at everything or being pulled in many different directions. My relationship now is more about wanting to create series. I want to create a body of work around a certain idea as opposed to only making a nice picture. I want to do more than just a single shot. I want to do more than that. The idea of legacy, the idea of what am I leaving behind, I want it to be more than pretty pictures. I want to tell more stories.
Shoes on the Table series
“As much as it’s been talked about how awful humans are and how awful we can be, the last thing that left Pandora’s box was hope.“
How did your “Shoes on the Table” series come to fruition? Do you see the series expanding?
MUMBI: A friend of mine Mutua Matheka wanted me to creatively direct a shoot that he was doing. He was going to use my daughter and a friend of my daughters. As we were planning, I did the clothes, I decided what the makeup was gonna be, what the hair was gonna be, the jewelry, etc. I think the theme for his shoot was about a queen and her acolytes, but I wanted to tell a story about the binds that we wear and how beautiful they are. It was about being soft. The idea that girls are soft, not in just what they wear, but also their softness is their strength. We should not take away from that, that gentle strength. Forget about a seat at the table, let’s stand on top of it. Let’s stomp on the table. Let’s break down the table. I would like to do that. Why do we want a seat? We don’t want seats at your table. It’s like Audrey Lorde said, you know, you cannot use the master’s tools to break down the table, so why do we want seats at the table? We’re not the ones who built it. I don’t want my daughters trying to struggle to get a seat at somebody’s table. Let them get their own table, build their own table.
What is your view of the art scene in Nairobi?
MUMBI: Now, take into consideration that I’ve only been shooting for five years. I’m still an outsider in the art scene. I’m older, you know, it’s my kids who are going through these things. It’s not me. I love it though. My daughter is a musician, she’s a singer, and the pop ups that she’s going to and the clothes that they’re creating and the music that they’re creating, not so much in the art world, but we are creating beautiful stuff. It’s not as vibrant as the other major cities like London, Paris, Copenhagen, New York or LA, it’s not that kind of vibrancy, but we’re finding our space within it, you know? I’m so envious of my kids because I didn’t have that, and maybe if I did I would have gone to art school. I think the art scene is really coming up. It really is. There’s always something happening. There’s film festivals, and there’s always people who reach out to me about short films. We’re getting there.
What do you hope people take away from your imagery?
MUMBI: Hope. That’s it. It really is the idea that we’re going to be fine. I can’t believe I’ve gotten emotional when I said that, but it really is hope. It’s what I feel on this side of the camera when I shoot. As much as it’s been talked about how awful humans are and how awful we can be, the last thing that left Pandora’s box was hope. It’s a thing that keeps us going. We’ll be okay. The world will continue spinning and we’re going to be here in whatever shape or form, you know? That’s what I want people to see.