The book All the Tricks by Elly Rwakoma recounts the life of a Ugandan who became one of the country’s best presidential photographers.

Co-published by History In Progress Uganda (HIPUganda) and YdocPublishing in The Netherlands, the book is about Rwakoma’s photojournalistic work.

It contains photographs of historical sites, presidents, sports, industry, school, weddings and family. What he loved to do most was to make portraits of women and children.

HIPUganda has 803 photos by Rwankoma, some of which were part of a photo exhibition held at the Makerere Art Gallery at Makerere University in Kampala from May 14 to June 6.

Rwakoma was the presidential photographer for Milton Obote, Idi Amin and Godfrey Binaisa, as well as the chairman of the Military Commission Paul Mwanga.

An unfortunate episode with Idi Amin forced him into exile in Kenya in 1978. He returned home after the downfall of Amin’s regime in 1979.
Included in the Rwakoma collec
tion are the pictures he took after an attempted assassination of president Binaisa at a political rally at Iganga playground in eastern Uganda on September 21, 1979. The pictures were banned by Binaisa’s government.

According to Dutch photographer Andrea Stultiens, the book tells the story of Rwakoma’s discovery of photography, what he could do with it, and what it did to him. It is based on a part of his personal image archives that is still available, and links to his colleague Mohamed Amin, whose son Salim Amin gave permission for the use of his father’s photographs.

Stultiens describes Rwakoma’s style of photography as extremely varied and creative.

The book is the third part of the book series called Ebifananyi/Ebishushani, meaning “images” in Luganda and Runyankole.
HIPUganda publishes photographs from private collections and archives in Uganda.