FROM the days of analogue photography, Zimbabweans have been familiar with photographers who resist being confined to the studio and are constantly moving from one place to another.
With a strong emphasis on their equipment, they were called cameramen, a term that is still widely used. Eugene Ulman is one such nomadic cameraman who has been photographing people and places from Maputo to Johannesburg, Addis, and going as far as Cairo in Egypt.
His recent take on the landscape and architecture of Harare central business district (CBD) has impressed many locals and instilled a new sense of wonder and pride.
Multitudes pour into CBD every morning, usually only concerned with getting to their destination. They are never actually aware of the space accommodating their movement.
Ignoring the silver blades of the rising sun breaking over the skyline, they burrow into the nooks and crannies of the concrete and steel structures where they go to serve and be served.
At sunset, they ferret their way out, and the process is reversed. Paying no attention to the famed golden sunset that delights visitors from beyond the ocean, they trudge with heavy shoulders and a sense of futility as they go home for dinner and sleep. There is a huge contrast in attitude from the way Ulman captures the scene.
Ulman is a filmmaker, writer and photographer. As his online biography puts it, “Eugene Ulman was born in Russia and grew up in Australia. He studied film and media at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been living, working, and travelling all over the African continent since 2001.” The photographer appears to move with equal measure of confidence across diverse social, economic and political landscapes.
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“I feel at home in many places: in Sydney, where I grew up, in St Petersburg, where I was born, in other cities like Harare, Maputo, London, Abidjan, and other places where I've spent extended periods,” he said.
The result of Ulman's Harare CBD project may look like an easy feat, but it could not have been a simple accomplishment. The challenge would come from finding the right position and picking the right time to shoot. Ulman would also have to take the risk of dodging stinky stuff, rusty nails, and broken bottles in murky alleys, to squeeze himself through narrow gaps, and lean over creaking ledges to frame that prized shot. US-based award-winning photographer Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi commended his fellow cameraman in an appreciation post via social media, “People must be baffled, wondering why anyone would go to such lengths just to photograph architecture. But you do it with such passion and dedication, it’s like you own the city.”
Mukwazhi, who is a jury member for the 2025 World Press Photo Contest, concludes, “Keep taking us on these journeys through Harare’s skyline, architecture, and the stories tucked behind the city’s alleys. You’re doing great work.”
Some of Ulman’s photographs shared on social media carry informative captions such as “The Harare Kopje (hill), on the southwestern fringe of the downtown area. Before the occupation of 1890, this was the seat of the Neharawa chieftaincy, which stretched all the way to what is today Avondale.”
His images, however, are not simply about thinking and knowing, they are a result of the photographer’s presence in that moment. A spiritual element in his work is the space that allows his subject to exist. The amount of room Ulman leaves around the object in his frame could conversely be asserted to be that he is a photographer of space. His work not only snaps people out of overfamiliarity with their surroundings, but it also initiates a new way of looking.
From a recalibrated perspective, walking along Kenneth Kaunda Avenue at mid-sunrise and looking down Orr Street at the T-junction, one will notice how the angled light hits one side of the street and casts a shadow on the opposite side. One will see the RBZ building rising from behind the cluster of buildings in the foreground, with the iconic sculpture on top of the Pearl Assurance House peeking into view from the opposite side. The vehicles going down Robert Mugabe Road look like toy cars that are carrying living, breathing human beings filled with a sense of purpose. A municipal worker in a red coat pushes a refuse cart across the road, with the Pick n Pay grocery store in the background. Commuter buses with eclectic captions turning in from South Avenue charge toward the vantage point of Kenneth Kaunda. Such are humanity’s moments that Ulman captures and generously shares with those who follow him on social media.
From a Dickensian perspective, rot and decay can be observed across the city, from the public eyesore of uncollected garbage at the Fourth Street, Chinhoyi Street and Market Square bus terminis, to the nightly congregation of sex workers and cab crawlers at various locations.
Ulman deliberately side-steps such problematic areas that locals frequently gripe about. His healthy images, however, cannot be equated to turning a blind eye to social ills within the context of his project. With close reading of the subtext of his images, nothing is left out from the photographer’s keen and non-judgmental observation.
