Joan E. Biren: Using the language of visual art to reverse the history of invisibility

US-American photographer and activist Joan E. Biren (JEB) wanted to make lesbians seen. She started taking pictures of them in 1971 and created a body of 64.400 images. In 1979, at a time when coming out could mean losing one's job, home and children, and when publishers were rather reluctant to release anything containing the word "lesbian", she published the book "Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians", a book that is still considered to be groundbreaking since it was the first time lesbians were "candidly and unashamedly" represented in photography. Biren had decided to reverse the history of invisibility (via and via and via).

My purpose was to help build a liberation movement, and you can’t build a movement without being seen.
Joan Biren

 

(above:) Gloria and Charmaine, Baltimore, 1979

The book is a collection of portraits of queer women of different ages and different backgrounds doing everyday tasks. Biren developed her films herself in order to avoid confiscation under the so-called obscenity laws (via and via and via).

There wasn’t a book of photographs by a lesbian, of lesbians, with the word ‘lesbian’ on the cover that I could find anywhere in the world. Even though there were all these possible harmful consequences, the power of being out had huge rewards. The ability to live an open life lifted the heavy burden that came from hiding, and lying, and self-denial… Without the bravery of these women, there would be no book.
Joan E. Biren

I wanted people to find their friends and their lovers in the book so that they could feel reflected and affirmed. Representing the broadest range of lesbians I could was a conscious choice that grew out of my intersectional politics even though we didn’t have that term at the time.
Joan E. Biren

(above:) Priscilla and Regina, Brooklyn, 1979

It all started with a selfie she took of herself and her lover Sharon Deevey, a "revolutionary moment". Despite a rather strong feminist movement, lesbian life was not really included in feminist narratives. Using the language of visual art is an opportunity to "seek control and prevent erasure" for many queer activists. The camera becomes an ally, helps acknowledge aspects of one's identity and do both "proving existence and moving forward into the future". (via)

I wasn’t preoccupied with learning the conventions of photography or developing a personal style. I just wanted my images to embrace the energy I experienced being with lesbians. I was trying to develop an approach where the photographer and the person being photographed had equal power in the transaction. I was always making my photographs so that other lesbians could see them. What guides me is what I think is needed politically. That’s my creative practice.
Joan E. Biren

A photograph can bring heat to the desire to be more of yourself. Seeing something you may never have even imagined can move you to desire it so much that you’re moved to action. I want my images to act as ‘wicks of desire’; to make the idea of radical change irresistible.
Joan E. Biren

(above:) Barbara and Beverly, Roxbury, 1978

“You have to have joy in your life, or you won’t make it. Resistance is difficult work. You have to understand everything that is wrong in order to try and fix it. You need joy to keep going. Back then, we thought we could change the world. We saw ourselves as revolutionaries, and to do that, you have to be an optimist. We were also young and in love, and both of those things tend towards hopefulness. Ultimately, it’s what the movement achieves that protects us and lets us live our authentic lives.”
Joan E. Biren

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photographs via  

Awkward Puppets: Offensive Jokes

Sam: "We have better technology."
Diego: "We have better food."
Sam: "Psh, please. There is more to life than just tacos."
Diego: "Yeah, well, there is more to life than just kale chips."
Sam: "We have better TV."
Diego: "We have better girls."
Sam: "We have better music."
Diego: "Are you ... are you kidding me? Every time I turn on the radio it's Taylor Swift complaining about high school boys. Isn't she like 45?"

::: Awkward Puppets, Offensive Jokes WATCH or WATCH

image via

"I wanted to look ambiguous."

"I was perceiving myself as good as a man or equal to a man and as powerful and I wanted to look ambiguous because I thought that was a very interesting statement to make through the media. And it certainly did cause quite a few ripples and interest and shock waves."

Annie Lennox

"Why are we not valuing the word 'feminism' when there is so much work to be done in terms of empowerment and emancipation of women everywhere?"

Annie Lennox

"Feminism is a word that I identify with. The term has become synonymous with vitriolic man-hating but it needs to come back to a place where both men and women can embrace it. It is particularly important for women in developing countries."

Annie Lennox

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photograph via

"Talk to me about your kids and how you feel about plastic surgery."

"Men aren't asked about age. Men aren't asked about their children. Not that these things aren't important, but I do feel like it becomes reductive when a woman's life becomes, 'Talk to me about your kids and how you feel about plastic surgery.'"
Julianne Moore

"With actors, all our ages are out there for all to see - you can't hide anything, really. And it's kind of a relief. This is my age, this is what I look like without makeup on - who cares? That youth culture - that lying about your age - it's all denial of death anyway."
Julianne Moore

"If you're 50, you're never going to be 50 ever again, so enjoy being 50. If you sit through the year wishing you were younger, before you know it, it's going to be over, and you're going to be 51."

Julianne Moore
 

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photograph via

The Complexities of a Hybrid Combination

"Jamaica is a small country of less than 3 million people that has been fundamentally shaped by European imperialism. I’m from a Black-majority society, though as with many other Caribbean and Latin countries, the racial/color conventions are different from the United States. The “one-drop rule” doesn’t hold, and “browns” were originally clearly demarcated from “Blacks” in a three-tiered white/Brown/Black social pyramid. As a “brown” Jamaican, I was — and to a certain extent still am — relatively privileged vis-à-vis the Black majority. So in a sense, in coming to the U.S. to work after I got my PhD in Canada, I was changing race, becoming part of an unambiguously subordinated “Black” American racial group, while equipped with the inherited cultural capital and privilege of my “brown” Jamaican middle-class origins and education.

You’ll appreciate, then, the complexities of this evolving hybrid combination of privilege and disadvantage, insider and outsider status, and its resulting weird epistemic amalgam of insight and obtuseness. I’m not Black American in the sense of having U.S. family origins that go back to slavery. But I’m Black and an American citizen, and I certainly identify with and have tried to support in my work, the long Black American struggle for racial equality and justice.

The U.S. and Jamaica are vastly different in innumerable ways. But what they have in common is that they’re both former slave societies, built on the racial exploitation of African persons. Yet whereas this historical reality is very much part of everyday consciousness in Black-majority Jamaica, it has been suppressed in white-majority America. Hence the hostility to the “1619 Project” and the truths it’s telling, truths that many white Americans still refuse to hear."

Charles W. Mills (1951-2021) via/more

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photograph by Adrian Boot (Railton Road, Brixton, 1979, home of Race Today, a British political magazine quoted as "the leading organ of Black politics") via

Refugees. By Brian Bilston.

They have no need of our help 

So do not tell me

These haggard faces could belong to you or me

Should life have dealt a different hand

We need to see them for who they really are

Chancers and scroungers 

Layabouts and loungers

With bombs up their sleeves

Cut-throats and thieves

They are not

Welcome here

We should make them

Go back to where they came from

They cannot

Share our food

Share our homes

Share our countries

Instead let us

Build a wall to keep them out

It is not okay to say

These are people just like us 

A place should only belong to those who are born there

Do not be so stupid to think that

The world can be looked at another way

(now read from bottom to top) 

Brian Bilston

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photograph of flood refugees (1937) by Walker Evans (1903-1975) via

She is a Tree of Life to Them

Consuelo Kanaga (1894-1978) was a US-American photographer and one of the pioneers among women in photography. She met Dorothea Lange in the early 1900s, Lange encouraged her to turn photography into a full-time career and introduced her to the photography community in San Francisco. 

In 1931, Consuelo Kanaga met an African-American man by the name of Eluard Luchell McDaniels. Kanaga employed McDaniels as a handyman and chauffeur. While Kanaga was McDaniels’s employer, the two struck up an unlikely friendship. Through discussion with McDaniels, Kanaga learned more about the racial injustices African Americans were continually forced to endure. Consuelo soon became a vocal advocate for the rights of African-Americans and other people of color.

Just shy of turning 40-years-old, Kanaga’s work as a photographer took on a whole new purpose. As a way to advocate for equal rights and equal treatment of African-Americans throughout the United States, Kanaga began to devote her photography career to capturing photos of African-Americans, their homes, and their culture. (via)

In 1950, Kanaga took the photograph of a mother with her two children in Maitland, Florida, where Kanaga was taking up residence in an artists's colony. In the agricultural swampland around Maitland, she took many photographs of Black field workers, among them this very one that later gained icon status. In Edward Steichen's 1955 exhibition "The Family of Man", it was paired ...

with a phrase from Proverbs 3:18—‘She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is everyone that retaineth her’—and has been known by that title ever since. For Steichen, the photograph represented an archetype of motherhood, and he often referred to it as one of his favorite images in the show. He wrote, ‘How completely this picture speaks . . . for itself! This woman has been drawing her children to her, protecting them, for thousands of years against hurt and discrimination’ (The New York Times Magazine, 29 April 1962, pp. 62-63). (via)

Kanaga continued photographing social causes and injustices in the next decades and became actively involved in civil rights. 

In her 60s and 70s at the time, she attended and photographed many demonstrations and marches throughout these years. At 69-years-old, Consuelo Kanaga was even arrested for her activism as she marched in the Walk for Peace in Albany, Georgia, during 1963. (via)

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photograph via, She is a Tree of Life to Them II: see

Quoting Angela Lansbury

"I've never been particularly aware of my age. It's like being on a bicycle - I just put my foot down and keep going."

Angela Lansbury

photograph via

The Good Mother Sacrificing Her Professional Life. A Survey.

According to a survey carried out in Italy in 2021, about 42% of the respondents believe that "it is not possible for women to be good mothers without partly sacrificing their professional life." Two out of three respondents said that "it is more difficult for a woman to have a successful career because she would have to partly sacrifice her family life." 51% of respondents believe that people would exaggerate gender inequalities (via).

photograph of Sophia Loren and her son via

You have to put on dark glasses.

"If you go to a meeting of the American Philosophical Association, you have to put on dark glasses, or else you’ll get snow blindedness from the expanse of white faces."

Charles W. Mills

 

photograph of Monica Vitti via

Women in French Cinema vs US-American Cinema

"In America, you get older faster. It’s like Dorian Gray--you are old at 40. The French give women the opportunity to age gracefully and to be feminine. French film allows them to be sexual and sensual in a way we don’t. We don’t allow women to be sexual after 40, and you see that in the way movies are cast. Movies are a reflection of the culture."

James Ulmer

In his "James Ulmer's French Hot List", Ulmer examines the so-called bankability (the degree to which an actor's name can raise financing for a film) of French actors and comes to the conclusion that, as of 2002, seven of the top 15 bankable stars are women and - except for one - all are older than 35. The US-American list, by contrast, includes only two women who at the time are either turning or have just turned 35 (via).

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photograph of Catherine Deneuve via

Zanele Muholi: Rewriting Black Queer Visual History

Zanele Muholi, born in 1972, is a South African visual activist and - according to Tate Modern - one of the most acclaimed photographers today. Muholi has been documenting black queer people's lives in South Africa for many years. Their mission is "to re-write a black queer and trans visual history of South Africa for the world to know of our resistance and existence at the height of hate crimes in SA and beyond" and creating a positive imagery to defeat stigma and negativity attached to queer identity in the South African context (via).

"The black body itself is the material. The black body that is ever scrutinised, and violated and undermined."

Zanele Muholi

Muholi photographs themself to emphatise with other queer people. "This is to say, ‘I am one of us,’. I’m not just taking photos for fine arts—I’m producing content that speaks to South African visual history and a group of people who, simply because of how they express themselves, won’t be counted in history. That includes me, so I’m working on content that’s produced by us for us about us—not dependent on other so-called experts." (via)

Muholi has produced a number of photographic series investigating the severe disconnect that exists in post-apartheid South Africa between the equality promoted by its 1996 Constitution and the ongoing bigotry toward and violent acts targeting individuals within the LGBTQ community. As an ensemble, Muholi’s images display the depth and diversity of this group in South Africa and in various countries that the artist has visited. With a profound commitment to redressing the social injustices faced by LGBTQ people, Muholi embraces a subjective perspective in their practice by forming relationships with the individuals they depict, including the women in Only Half the Picture (2003–06), the transgender or gay men in Beulahs (2006–10), and the couples in Being (2007). (via)

(above) In this tribute to her mother, a domestic worker, Muholi created a familiar image of exoticised Africa from laundry pegs. (literally via)

"I was thinking as you cross borders, the racial profiling that happens … When you’ve been through that process, you feel like trash. You wonder why this always happens to people like us."

Zanele Muholi

"My art is political. It’s not for show, it’s not for play."

Zanele Muholi

photographs via and via and via and via and via and via 

Hostile Neighbours: Sino-Japanese Antipathy

According to a survey carried out by Pew Research in China, Japan, Australia and India in 2016 (n = 7.618), stereotypical views of one another are largely negative in China and Japan. The countries see each other as violent, about 8-in-10 Japanese describe the Chinese as arrogant, about 7-in-10 Chinese describe the Japanese that way. Three-quarters of the Japanese (particularly those age 50 and older) believe the Chinese are nationalistic while only 4-in-10 Chinese associate the Japanese with nationalism. Neither country sees the other as honest. Only 11% of Japanese have a favourable view of China and only 14% of Chinese have a favourable opinion of Japan (via).

photograph by Issei Suda via

The Final Girl in Slasher Films

Brewer (2009) compared eight original horror films with their remakes to analyse female stereotypes. All of them were slasher films, i.e., a type of horror film in which a psychotic person kills many young people, usually women, using weapons such as chainsaws or blades. In most cases, the killer is an ordinary person who in the past had suffered a trauma and due to this injustice seeks vengeance. Often, filmmakers establish the so-called final girl in the beginning of the film: a tough and determined female who manages to survive in the end of the film after the "final struggle" with the killer. 

In the horror genre, the stereotypic characteristics of beauty, gentility, and morality permeate the slasher film. According to Rockoff (2002), “One of the most enduring images of the slasher film is that of the beautiful heroine screaming with fear- as the killer rapidly approaches. These post-modern damsels in distress, who have been collectively referred to as the “Final Girl,” are usually the lone survivors of the killer‟s rampage” (p. 13). In a study conducted by Sapolsky, Molitor, and Luque (2003), researchers observed the 10 most commercially successful slasher films of the 1990s. Results showed that the films portrayed female characters in more instances of fear, screaming, and cowering, than the male characters.

There are still stereotypic portrayals, however, they slightly shifted over the past decades with female roles expanding beyond their original stereotypic and limiting roles. While the original films portrayed women as helpless in fight scenes, the remakes showed them as women who were well capable of taking care of themselves and were fighting back. The original films portrayed women as unintelligent persons while they turned into intelligent problem solvers in the remakes. 

In respect to dialogue during critical thinking, the original films seemed to have either no real dialogue, or an inner dialogue. On the other hand, half of the remade films allowed the female characters to have very strong dialogue. 

In both films original and remake, women were victimised. In the remakes, however, the final girl often turned into the hero. Another difference observed in the analysis is sexual morality. In the past, those surviving in the end tended to be the virginal girls while the promiscuous ones died. This is a stereotype that still exists but results show that it is not as prevalent today in the remakes is it used to be in the original films. When Cowan and O'Brien (1990) conducte a study coding 56 slasher films and focusing on the violence directed towards men and women, they came to the conclusion that the non-surviving female characters were more frequently the more sexual ones: "In slasher films, the message appears to be that sexual women get killed and only the pure women survive".

According to the legendary “scream queen” Jamie Lee Curtis, “There‟s a sexual factor, yes. They kill the loose girls and save the virgins in most of these movies” (Rockoff, 2002, p. 14). This further perpetuates the social stereotype in horror films that women are to remain sexually reserved and virginal, if they want to survive. The viewers expect those women who survive to remain proper and virginal, whereas those who are sexually promiscuous often die at the hands of the killer.

And finally... 

Watching horror films is said to offer viewers a socially sanctioned opportunity to perform behaviors consistent with traditional gender stereotypes” (Weaver & Tamborini, 1996, p. 184). When the media, particularly the film industry, repeatedly expose viewers to social stereotypes of violence against helpless women, social acceptance of the behavior occurs. Thus, “early work on this topic found that males exposed to a sexually violent slasher film increased their acceptance of beliefs that some violence against women is justified and that it may have positive consequences (p. 184).

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- Brewer, C. (2009) The stereotypic portrayal of women in slasher films: then versus now. Master's Thesis: Louisiana State University, link

- photograph (Hitchcock on the set of Psycho) via

Global Adult Literacy Rate By Gender

Generally speaking, literacy rates have increased worldwide for both genders. Nevertheless, as of 2020, there is still a gender gap when it comes to literacy with 90% of men and about 83% of women being literate (via).

photograph of Marilyn Monroe via

"Something needed to be done and we did it." Brick Lane 1978

On 4th of May 1978, Altab Ali, a 24-year-old Bengali garment worker, was shopping for meal and planning to stop by a voting station to submit his ballot. He never did. That day, in broad daylight, he was brutally stabbed by three racist teenagers for being a "Paki". His body was found dead near Brick Lane. The next day, results of the elections showed that the National Front had gained popularity and that extremism "was making a return to mainstream British politics".

It was not the first racist attack on the Asian population but it was one that sparked reactions. Ten days later, about 7.000 Bengali marched from Brick Lane to Downing Street behind Ali's coffin. Ali's murder "galvanised what is now known as the Bengali Resistance Movement", protests that lasted throughout the summer of 1978 with people campaigning every single day (via and via and via).

"Something needed to be done and we did it."
Sunahwar Ali

photographs (c) Paul Trevor (first one: Adler Street, London E1, 14 May 1978. The start of the march behind Altab Ali’s coffin from Whitechapel to Hyde Park, organised by the Action Committee Against Racial Attack) via and via and via (coffin departing for Downing Street) and via and via and via

Gender Dysphoria

Some transgender persons may experience "gender dysphoria" which refers to the "psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one's sex assigned at birth and one's gender identity". Gender dysphoria often starts in childhood, some experience it after puberty or many years later.

The DSM-5-TR defines gender dysphoria as an incongruence between one’s experienced gender and their assigned gender. It lasts at least six months and is manifested by at least two of the following criteria: 

A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and primary and/or secondary sex characteristics (or in young adolescents, the anticipated secondary sex characteristics) 

A strong desire to be rid of one’s primary and/or secondary sex characteristics because of a marked incongruence with one’s experienced/expressed gender (or in young adolescents, a desire to prevent the development of the anticipated secondary sex characteristics) 

A strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics of the other gender 

A strong desire to be of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender) 

A strong desire to be treated as the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender) 

A strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender) (literally via).

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photograph by Bruce Gilden via

On Aging. By Maya Angelou.

When you see me sitting quietly, 

Like a sack left on the shelf, 

Don’t think I need your chattering. 

I’m listening to myself. 

Hold! Stop! Don’t pity me! 

Hold! Stop your sympathy! 

Understanding if you got it, 

Otherwise I’ll do without it! 

When my bones are stiff and aching, 

And my feet won’t climb the stair, 

I will only ask one favor: 

Don’t bring me no rocking chair. 

When you see me walking, stumbling, 

Don’t study and get it wrong. 

‘Cause tired don’t mean lazy 

And every goodbye ain’t gone. 

I’m the same person I was back then, 

A little less hair, a little less chin, 

A lot less lungs and much less wind. 

But ain’t I lucky I can still breathe in.

Maya Angelou

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photograph via

Evonne Fay Goolagong, Australian of the Year 1971

Evonne Goolagong Cawley, born in 1951, is a tennis legend who became one of the world's leading tennis players in the 1970s and 80s, winning the French Open singles, the Australian Open doubles championships, the women's singles tournament at Wimbledon, then winning Wimbledon as the first mother for 66 years, winning 14 Grand Slam tournament titles, representing Australia in three Fed Cup competitions, and, and, and. In 1971, she was named Australian of the Year, in 1985, Goolagong was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame, just to mention a few of her successes (via).

Winning Wimbledon was fine but certainly did not mean not being discriminated against:

Before I started traveling overseas and I was with a friend and in those days I loved music and I loved disco dancing so she took me out but I wasn’t allowed in. That happened again in Brisbane and I was with two Aboriginal friends and this was just after I won Wimbledon. I said ‘don’t worry we’ll go somewhere else’. I think it hurt my friends more than me.
Evonne Goolagong Cawley

Sydney was to provide no respite from the racism Goolagong Cawley had to face. She especially remembers an incident while playing with Edwards’ daughter against two older ladies. “One of the older ladies didn’t like the idea of two youngsters beating up on them. We won pretty easily. When it was time to shake hands. “And she said; ‘This is the first time I’ve had the pleasure of playing a N***er’ and I’ve never heard that before and I started to get really upset.” As her mentor Edwards did his best to shield her from such prejudice. “He taught me not to believe in what you read, believe in yourself so I never read anything. I realize now he was blocking me from a lot of things. “I always just thought of myself as a tennis player. I was protected from a lot of publicity and politics of life.”
Evonne Goolagong Cawley

Being an Indigenous Australian athlete she was believed to have different skills and qualities and was "patronised by both racist and sexist descriptions by a white male-controlled media" (Stell cited in Bruce & Hallinan, 2001). She was hardly mentioned without the preface "Aboriginal girl" (via)...

I'd much rather people knew me as a good tennis player than as an aboriginal who happens to play good tennis. Of course I'm proud of my race, but I don't want to be thinking about it all the time.
Evonne Goolagong

I don't think of myself as being colored but of being Australian.
Evonne Goolagong

"Australian newspapers gave considerable coverage to the 1971 women's Wimbledon final. Wimbledon was and is the tennis world's premier event, yet the women's final did not receive such coverage in Australia in the previous year, when the event was won, as expected, by Australia's Margaret Court. Court played again in the final in 1971, but this time the result was an upset: a surprise win by a young player whose coach had predicted she would first win the tournament three years later in 1974, a prediction possibly calculated to have exactly this publicity effect. Newspapers across Australia announced the result with sensationalist headlines and hyperbole. The winner was a young Evonne Goolagong (later Cawley), aged nineteen and a newcomer on the tennis world stage. Her potential to win this tournament had been hinted at earlier in the year when she won the French Open at Roland Garros. Was it her youth, her rural Australian background and unexpected success that produced this rush of interest in her and her life? Was it her beauty, in a sport where a woman's media profile was and is heavily influenced by her appearance and sexuality? Or was it that she was of Aboriginal descent, the heroine of a classic rags-to-riches tale of triumph? "
Karen Fox

Today, Goolagong`s foundation is dedicated to encouraging Indigenous boys and girls to play tennis.

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- Bruce, T. & Hallinan, C. (2001). Cathy Freeman: the quest for Australian identity. In David Andrews & Steve Jackson (eds.) Sports Stars. The Cultural Politics of Sporting Celebrity (257-270). London & New York: Routledge.

- photograph via

"Our cultural memory follows us everywhere." Jean-Michel Basquiat

"I'm an artist who has been influenced by this New York environment. But I have a cultural memory. I don't need to look for it, it exists. It's over there in Africa. That doesn't mean that I have to live there. Our cultural memory follows us everyhwere, wherever you are."
Jean-Michel Basquiat

"I don't know if my being Black has anything to do with my success. I don't think I should be compared to Black artists but with all artists."
Jean-Michel Basquiat

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photograph (by Andy Warhol) via

"Giving Uganda back to ethnic Ugandans." The Expulsion of Ugandan Asians.

Uganda became a protectorate of the British Empire in 1894 and was finally granted independence in 1962. In 1896, The British administration sent over 40.000 citizens of India as labourers to build a railway. Later, more Asians were brought to Uganda to "serve as a buffer between Europeans and Africans in the middle rungs of commerce and administration" (via), many of them owned shops. In fact, Asian Ugandas owned 90% of the country's businesses and accounted for 90% of the country's tax revenues. They made up only 1% of Uganda's population but earned 1/5 of the nation's income. This, the British investing in the education of Asians over the education of Ugandans, and the segregation of schooling and healthcare later led to tensions. 

In 1971, General Idi Amin staged a coup and declared himself President of Uganda. In his eight-year regime of terror there were mass executions of tribes that had been loyal to Obote, the elected president who had been forced into exile. Amin also terrorised the general public making clear that everybody opposing his regime would be eliminated. It is estimated that about 300.000 civilians were massacred (via).

Needing a new enemy to distract from his problems and to make himself popular, Amin decided to capitalise on the resentement of Ugandan Asians, called them "bloodsuckers" and accused them of destroying the country's economy, of engaging in unethical business practices, corruption, ethnic elitism and "milking Uganda's money". In 1972, Amin announced the mass expulsion of Asian Ugandans over a period not to exceed three months. In other words, Amin was the man who would "give Uganda back to ethnic Ugandans". In 1972, between 50.000 and 70.000 Asians were forced to leave the country, those who stayed would be sent to concentration camps, Amin threatened (via and via). Asians were given 90 days time to pack their lives and leave, many moved to the United Kingdom. In the years to follow, the economy of Uganda slumped (via). 

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photograph (1973, family living in Leicester after being expelled from Uganda) via