Limited-Edition Photograph by Yann Gross

“Christine Sawunda is one of the first Ugandan skateboarders. This now twenty year old girl lives in Kitintale and loves the magic feeling of riding on a skateboard. In the last two years, she has also become a famous local singer, performing almost every week at the Obama Club, next to the bus station in Kitintale. Through skateboarding and without government help or support by any organization, the teenagers of Kitintale have managed to ward off boredom and the negative effects caused by the poverty of their daily lives. When they are on their “Fantasy Island,” which is their skate park and their pride and joy, the skateboarders are not far from paradise: they feel freedom and a sense of community which allows them to dream and have prospects for the future."
—Yann Gross

Aperture is pleased to introduce this limited-edition print by Swiss photographer, Yann Gross to our collecting audience. Gross' Lavina series is featured in issue 202 of Aperture Magazine. As Joel Vacheron states "Yann Gross is passionate about skateboarding and always takes his deck on his journeys. During one of his trips to Eastern Africa, he encounters a group of skaters, known for having built the first and only half-pipe in Uganda. Located in Kitintale, in the popular suburbs of Kampala, Gross is immediately seduced by this vernacular infrastructure and the integrative function it plays among the local youth. Given the area's contingencies, the lack of material in particular, skateboarding becomes a collective sport that produces a whole new range of styles and unprecedented tricks. Having shared its daily life for several months, Gross finally becomes a full-fledged member of the group, to the point he even co-organises the first skateboarding contest in the African Great Lakes region. In parallel to these anecdotes, his insider's view makes him a privileged analyst of the ways this sport strengthens ties and fosters dreams among this micro-community. Kitintale goes thus beyond mere documentary narratives, trendy clichés or paternalistic discourses and offers both a humanistic and a symmetrical account of contemporary changes in Africa."

In 2010 Kitintale was exhibited at the Bredaphoto Festival at the Museum Breda in the Netherlands as well as the Photoforum Pasquart in Biel, Switzerland. Gross also published this work in the book, Kitintale, which was a winner at the Hyères 2010 International Festival of Fashion & Photography and received the Swiss Federal Design Award. It was also listed among the best books of 2010 by Photo-Eye.

Yann Gross lives in Switzerland where he graduated from ECAL (École Cantonale d'Art de Lausanne) in 2007. He was awarded the PhotoEspana Descubrimientos ("Discovery") prize in 2008 and was the 2010 winner of the International Fashion & Photography Festival in Hyères. His "Horizonville" project has been shown internationally and was recently published as a book by jrp/ringier this year.