In the dynamic landscape of contemporary photography, few voices resonate as powerfully as Barbara Minishi. Her work, deeply rooted in the vibrant streets of Nairobi, has not only captured the essence of the city but also explored the intricate relationships between people, objects, and their environments.
With a career spanning over two decades, Barbara Minishi has become a significant figure in African photography, known for her storytelling and keen eye for the unseen. In this interview, she shares the journey to photography, the cultural and social influences that shape her work, and the themes that continue to inspire her creative process.
Art Report Africa: Can you share the story of how your journey into photography began in the streets of Nairobi?
Barbara Minishi: A street is often defined as a public pathway, but for me, photography began as a private pathway to discovering my own meaning, belonging, and inspiration. As a child with a vivid imagination, everyday stories and images evoked a passion for seeing the fantastical in the natural world, where everything seemed alive. Remember our folk tales? The pots that spoke, the trees that walked, the wise animals, and the ancestors we communed with?
I have always been fascinated by how objects, considered inanimate, can serve as both vehicles and containers for what wants to be dreamed through us into life. The camera was the first object that awakened me to this possibility. My relationship with the camera began as an act of play during my teenage years. I remember taking a portrait of my mother with my father’s Minolta camera on a visiting day at boarding school in 1997. The image was later enlarged, framed, and proudly displayed in our home by my father. That moment marked the beginning of my love affair with photography.
When I went to university in 1999, my father gifted me the camera. It gave me a sense of independence, allowing me to observe and record freely, without the need to participate directly in activities. Photography gifted me a social power and privilege to inquire, listen, and watch people. Inspired by old Life magazines, I began creating my own ‘Day in The Life’ photo stories, following individuals whose lives intrigued me—street food vendors, cobblers, social workers, contemporary dancers, tailors—documenting their stories simply because I was curious.
Despite my deep engagement with photography, I didn’t initially consider it a career option. However, after graduating from Daystar University with a BA in Communication (Print Media & Advertising) in 2003, I realized that photography was what I truly desired to pursue. My choice wasn’t met with open arms, and there were many who doubted my potential as a professional photographer. But I continued, driven by my passion, and soon began to gain recognition in the field.
ARA: How has the cultural and social landscape of Nairobi shaped your work? Can you talk about any specific local influences that have been particularly impactful?
BM: Nairobi is a diverse and vibrant city. As a daily walker, I find that there is always something new to see when you pay attention to life. Walking without a camera taught me to be a good photographer—it’s about presence, awareness, connection, and deep listening to people, places, and objects. There is energy and poetry everywhere, and I celebrate the animacy of life.
In 2013, I began to have a curious connection to finding feathers while contemplating existential questions during my walks in Nairobi. These symbols and the meaning I ascribe to them are specific to who I am and my socio-cultural narratives and beliefs. For me, Nairobi’s markets, especially Toi Market, have been places of alchemical synergy. They have provided me with incredible second-hand books, costumes, and set backgrounds, including a Polaroid SX 70 Land Camera that I found for just 13 dollars.
Wangechi Mutu, a local influence with international recognition, has been an eternal inspiration for me. Her collages, paintings, and sculptures connect to my soul, affirming and celebrating the evolving nature of being a woman. The GoDown Arts Centre and Kuona Artists Collective have also been significant influences, providing spaces for connection and creative homecoming.
ARA: What themes do you explore in your work? How do you select these themes, and what message do you aim to convey through them?
BM: It’s important to understand what deeply drives your motivations and desires. When I began photography, it was because it gifted me access to my authentic voice—freedom, exploration, and illumination. However, as I delved deeper, I realized that my themes were rooted in personal and collective feminine power, our connection to ancestral wisdom, and the ecological shapeshifting of our inherited narratives.
In 2015, a potent dream led me to return to my birth home, initiating a drastic personal change that resulted in the multimedia series under the title “The 13th Path.” This series represents a deeply internal and external transformation—a complex initiation into my undiscovered soul terrain. The number 13, often feared, also represents the feminine and the camel in Hebrew, symbolizing resilience and the ability to traverse hostile environments.
The 13th Path has unveiled themes of personal and collective healing, and this exploration continues to reflect in my current projects, such as “Utawala,” my photography series on women creating legacies, and “Inheritance,” a short film on a young woman reclaiming her voice.
ARA: Your work encompasses various mediums such as photography, video, and virtual reality. Can you discuss your creative process and how you decide which medium to use for a particular work?
BM: Photography, which means writing with light, will always be my foundational medium. However, I delight in the variety of available mediums, each offering a different way to express a story. I see photography not just as a camera and print but as a connection, an illumination, a deep listening to life.
Learning and exploring new crafts, mediums, and expressions that resonate with me is essential to my creative process. It’s about being present to all possibilities yet also focusing on the specific resonance I am attuned to. When I directed “Inheritance,” I wanted to concurrently direct an immersive VR-related short in the ancestral realm, but due to time constraints, it wasn’t possible. Nonetheless, I wrote a future VR project inspired by ancestral landscape realms.
Creativity demands a willingness to fail and embrace new mediums and technology. My approach is always to try something new, see how it resonates, and then proceed with discernment. It’s not about grasping the latest shiny thing but rather about allowing my inner practice to inform my external creative devotion and discipline.
ARA: As a creative who is constantly exploring new realms, what are your future aspirations? Are there any specific projects or themes you're excited to explore next?
BM: During my birthday in April this year, I termed my next decade as 'Enchantment.' Within Enchantment is the continuation of the themes within the 13th Path from a new perspective. Last year, I pitched a Pan African anthology series, and a mentor revealed to me that someone thought the project was too big. Let's all be BIG in dreaming, visioning, planning, and executing our Enchantment. This is a decade of fully attuning to the power within and the collective.
The 13th Path taught me the futility of dimming my light in being of service and the utmost importance of leaning into your ordinariness. That part you think is weird but is actually quite not. In the ordinary is where the eternal resides, and the future is NOW.
I am saying, being, doing, and opening to exciting collaborative, correlative possibilities regarding my first feature film, which I'm currently writing and will be directing soon. I will still play with creating experimental shorts with XR and sharing the legacy teaching workshops all over Africa. My first solo multimedia exhibition and book on The 13th Path will occur, and limited edition prints are also currently available.
What about a center solely dedicated to photography and film? Absolutely! This all requires a supportive aligned community and collaborators, so please reach out and connect with me if any of this resonates. Collectively we are all undergoing growth and shifts. There are narratives that are done with and new ones yearning to be expressed.
Enchantment is less about the best next and more of reframing the deliciousness of The 13th Path. My creative practice is Spiritual Practice is Life Practice is Communal Practice. There is still an aspect of mystery in not knowing the exact what and how, and pivots and wonderful surprises always happen. Nonetheless, I am currently enchanted and being enchanted and co-creating and sharing enchantment with the world.
ABOUT BARBARA MINISHI
In 2015, triggered by an urgent dream to return to her birth home, Barbara initiated a personal change that deeply affected her creative practice and lifestyle. Utilizing nature as an ally, The 13th Path became an explorative and reflective multimedia project that rooted her to life while navigating the liminal and hidden shadows of her past demanding attention.
The essence of a seed lies in its journey of being buried in darkness and growing down first into the depths, and The 13th Path evolved into more than just a catalyst towards creative and spiritual divination and fermentation. It became an invocation of the anima, an ecological shapeshifting of (un)/(re)learning and re-weaving the invisible inherited narratives of her matrilineal lineage within her. Because of the 13th Path, dormant new mythologies and understandings were unearthed and continue to reflect in her current projects and practice.
In 2022, she wrote and directed her first immersive 360 short film and was also the Middle East and Africa regional winner of the inaugural Fujifilm GFX Global Challenge for “Utawala,” a portrait project on women creating legacies. From 2023, she evolved her practice into experimental sound design and conceptualizing creative workshops centered on reclamation, attunement, and legacies.
Her fiction directorial short film debut, “Inheritance,” about a young woman reclaiming her voice, had its Kenyan premiere in March 2024. She has themed her 2024 cycle onwards as "Enchantment," a deeper devotional presence, engagement, and practice with life, imagination, and meaning. An immersive thirteen (13) chapter mythopoetic trans-disciplinary series spanning the next eight (8) years has been initiated.
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