His photographic journey began four years ago, in the midst of many shifts. “I think it was around 2020, I was helping my mother in law with her vegetable business so it required me to drive to go pick up the vegetables. Certain things just caught my eye, and I thought, “If I had a good camera, I’d love to capture this. But I just started using the phone that I had.”

Kalenga is searching for the normal, with a curiosity about everyday life, especially life where is from. “I find the ordinary fascinating. I don’t see it being shown, and to me it’s important. It is important that people see it.”Nkonge’s work transports us into the centre of the spaces he chooses to photograph. Carrying a deep feeling of both, familiarity and wonder. We are able to get up close, only in a way an insider can.

Maybe that’s how he is able to photograph the space in-between, achieving a somewhat contemplative cacophony of rhythm. Like any good photographer, he is chasing light, and learning how it works in the places he is wanting to show. “Light is now something I’m aware of, before I’d go out and just photograph, but lately I'm very specific.”

This deliberateness is seen in his ongoing body of work, “Barbershops, fresh popcorn and chickens in the land of plenty”, which was shortlisted for the 2024 Contemporary African Photography Prize. We are shown Lusaka, from his unique perspective and sensibility. 

At first glance, you could consider Kalenga’s work to be street photography, but that’s where you’d be mistaken. Granted it mainly takes place in the crowded corners of Zambia, but it is a visual narrative that comments on socio-economic issues such as Zambia’s wealth disparity, the urban landscape and the process of co-existing. When asked what he thinks about this imposed label he says, “I don’t like it, I don’t wanna be restricted by it." 

“We used to live with my cousins, I think I was 10 years old. We played in groups, we’d hunt birds or go fishing in these streams near home and we always moved in groups. But whenever we went, and I noticed something that fascinated me, sometimes I’d leave the group and go out on my own. It was that curiosity that would lead me to break out from the pack.”

As if caught between a thought and a memory, he continues , “I used to write poetry, most of it was quite bad. But I’d like to think, if you went through it you would see some similarity between my photography and my writing. I hope I can express photographically, what I tried to, using words. I hope I can bring the same emotion and spirit.”

Like many contemporary artists working on the continent, Nkonge is in the middle of a renaissance of autonomous expression. Only in recent history, have Africans been able to communicate personal narratives and reflect their realities, without restriction or political agendas. “There are certain nuances about being here, about being a part of this place that can only be appreciated by someone from here.” He say, profoundly. “I struggle to put it into words but they are there. They are so small, you could miss them but they are there. I consider my photography a pursuit, to try and seek them out and show them.”

Kalenga’s seeking is taking him back to spaces that he used to walk in his youth, now with a new sense of urgency and a way to re-establish those familial connections with the same environment. “On Sunday, I went to town to photograph. When I was a teenager, I used to live near town. As I was walking, I started thinking, ‘These places, they’re a part of me.’ It’s as if I’m trying to seek out myself in these places.”

That might be the key to Kalenga Nkonge’s ability to blend in, and present to us a depiction of Zambia we rarely see. He is less invisible, and more a part of the landscape. An interwoven tapestry of man and space. He is truly an extension of this place, and this place is an extension of him.