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Nasser Road
APERTURE FIRST BOOK SHORTLIST
SCHÖNSTE BÜCHER (SHORTLIST)
BEST DUTCH BOOK DESIGNS
SCHÖNSTE BÜCHER (SHORTLIST)
BEST DUTCH BOOK DESIGNS
Kristof Titeca (BE)
Concept and editing:
Kristof Titeca
Text:
Kristof Titeca
Yusuf Serumkuma
Photography:
Kristof Titeca
Badru Katumba
Zahara Abdul
Proofreading:
Will Boase
Design:
Rob van Hoesel
Lithography and print:
Tielen (NL)
Binding:
Patist (NL)
Supported by:
VLIR-UOS
Nasser Road, Kampala: nicknamed Uganda’s Silicon Valley. This street is a mythical place known for its printing trade and as a centre of fraud. From fake identity cards to university degrees, anything can be made and bought here.
This publication draws attention to one of its main products: posters and calendars portraying politicians and well-known personalities as superheroes. Do not be surprised if you see images of Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden or Mohammed Khaddafi transformed into RoboCops, ready for combat. The artworks are both decorative and political, telling the story of the common man’s struggle against the might of Western imperialism, with international villains celebrated as anti-heroes.
Nasser Road is a collage of works by local designers and prints that Kristof Titeca (BE) collected since he became interested in this peculiar history twenty years ago, about which he has written an extensive analysis. The publication also contains photographs that he and Ugandan photographers Badru Katumba and Zahara Abdul took of this place, and an essay by playwright and essayist Yusuf Serumkuma.
A photographical discovery of a place where everything seems simultaneously unthinkable and real, a place where everything is possible.
Kristof Titeca is a Professor of International Development at the Institute of Development Policy (IOB) at the University of Antwerp, working on conflict and governance in Central and Eastern Africa. He has published extensively on these issues in both academic and media-outlets. Graduated from the LUCA School of Arts in Gent, he has a keen interest in visual arts. His book Rebel Lives. Photographs from inside the Lord’s Resistance Army (Hannibal Books/FOMU) was exhibited in Antwerp, New York, Geneva and Kinshasa.
- Aperture–Paris Photo Book Awards 2023 (first photobook shortlist)
- Les rencontres d'Arles Author Book Award 2023 (shortlist)
“The material choices add a clever touch to an already fantastic book. The cardstock used throughout the book structures and presents the content perfectly, creating a uniquely supportive platform for Titeca’s research.” (Alex Lin)
“Nasser Road is exciting in both its content and presentation. The photobook is a deep dive into the layers that underlie a complex social phenomenon, its archive of bright posters providing an entry point into a range of cultural issues. It’s also an engaging example of extending the definitional boundaries of the photobook to include printed photographic ephemera, where photography and collage come together in imagery made and circulated for a specific kind of communication.” (Olga Yatskevich)
“For a majority of Ugandans on the street, he continues, these posters, which resonate with the aesthetic deployed by Wakalywood, the local film industry, are above all anti-imperialist symbols that crystallise local frustrations in the name of ‘rejection or resistance to global power structures and hegemonic systems such as colonialism, imperialism and capitalism’.” (Jean-Christophe Servant)
Le Monde Diplomatique (in French)
“The flashy calendars, bundled in the book Nasser Road / Political Posters in Uganda, are colourful, graphic and wryly humourous. Here, the very figures that so many see as villains are anti-heroes against Western imperialism. The calendars are not an endorsement of violent actions, says compiler Kristof Titeca, but an outlet for frustrations about unfair power relations in the world.” (Rosa Luna van Crevel)