Documentary photography is what sets 24-year-old Jean Bizimana apart from his peers.

Most Rwandan photographers have limited themselves to simple topics and themes mainly revolving around Rwanda’s recovery from the 1994 genocide, while Bizimana chooses a particular theme that he then compiles into a coherent narrative.

To Bizimana, documentary photography is a unique way of helping the world understand peoples lives and societies.

“There is a lot to learn from society lifestyle and further more keeping this culture through archiving for people to learn from in the future,” he said.

To gain more experience, alongside pursuing his bachelor’s degree in Business and Information Communication Technology at Mount Kenya University, the artiste worked with media houses like Service Magazine, a business magazine and Igihe.com, a local news website, before embarking on a solo photography career earlier this year.

His first solo project under documentary photography is about Rwandan Traditional Banana Beer (Urwagwa) making in Rutsiro, a district, where traditional processing still prevails.

With a self-funded budget of Rfw200,000 ($246), Bizimana captures the step by step process of local beer making, right from harvesting bananas, storing to the detailed process of brewing and extraction of the local beer.

Beer celebrations and drinking is a typical social custom in Rwanda since ancient times. With modernity having set in, most youth aren’t aware of where this brewing culture comes from and how it is done.

Bizimana chose Rutsiro district in Rwanda’s western province because its one of the few remote districts where this custom still prevails.

For close to two weeks he documented this journey of Rwandan traditional banana beer making and discovered that the same custom is shared in the Democratic Republic of Congo and some parts of Uganda. Bizimana captures the activities as they unfold, right from harvesting of the banana plantain to the final consuming of Urwagwa by people at the local bar, which completes his story.

The skills deployed by the photographer go way beyond just shooting pictures, but his approach to the whole idea is what convinces one who views the photographs.

His journey into photography began as a primary school pupil in 2000 with a group of American friends, who had come to pay a visit in Rwanda.

Together with colleagues, Bizimana steadily gained photography skills through workshops, where he was introduced to a number of photography professionals like Gar Knight, a programme for narrative and documentary practice expert who also is Tufts University Founder, Dr Zoe Norridge, an instructor from Kings College of London, and together they worked on a few documentary photography projects which empowered him.

At secondary school up to university, Bizimana initially focused on Computer Studies course while doing photography to earn some money for upkeep, till early this year, when he opted to dedicate time into the skill. The artiste has set up blogs and a website for showcasing his work via social sites, which has exposed him to a wider audience.

Bizimana isn’t aiming at holding exhibitions, since they are expensive, yet sponsorship of the photography art is still a great challenge in Rwanda. He is hopeful that as the country advances, more initiatives like magazines and book publishers will come aboard and these will in turn need such rich content.