The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), led by the infamous Joseph Kony, is a rebel group that was active in Northern Uganda from the second half of the 1980s. The rebellion became notorious for the use of extreme violence, in particular its large-scale abductions of civilians, of which more than half were children. Rebel Lives is a visual story about life inside the rebel group: based on photographs taken by LRA commanders between 1994 and 2004, the book documents life inside the group, and depicts the rebels as they wanted to be seen among themselves and by the outside world. Kristof Titeca, senior lecturer in Development Studies and expert on the LRA, collected this material, and used it to trace the photographed (former) rebels. Together with Congolese photographer Georges Senga, he travelled back to photograph the former rebels in their current context, and give a voice to these actors. This visual story is not only about the LRA. It is a story about conflict in all times, and all places, where the limits of victim and perpetrator have become blurred, where people struggle to survive and find their place, and where children in particular bear the brunt of this tension.

Published to accompany an exhibition at the Museum of Photography in Antwerp, running until October 2019

About the Author
Dr. Kristof Titeca (*1978) is a professor of international development at the Institute of Development Policy, University of Antwerp. He has conducted extensive field research on governance and conflict in central and eastern Africa, and particularly the Lord's Resistance Army, about which he has conducted field research since 2003. He has published expansively on these issues in both the academic and non-academic press (such as Foreign Affairs, Al Jazeera, the Washington Post, and so on). He was a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, and the universities of Makerere and Gulu in Uganda, with which he continues to be affiliated. He holds a PhD in political sciences (Ghent University, 2007), and studied photography at the LUCA school of arts, Ghent (2003-2006).

Reviews
"Disturbingly haunting and banally quotidian at the same time. Based on meticulous research and astute writing, with beautiful poems and remarkable follow-up photos, Rebel Lives unveils a layer of humanity that makes the rebels' own photos worth understanding in the first place. It is a most important historical document." - Sverker Finnstroem, author of award-winning Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda



Book Information
ISBN 9789492677983
Author Kristof Titeca
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Cannibal/Hannibal Publishers
Publisher Cannibal/Hannibal Publishers