Pictorial-Biographical Posters
These are copies of the original posters on display at the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre in Guyana - because these were made for display at the CJRC please read from right side to left side of posters
(You will need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer to be able to read these .pdf files)
1918-1949
Cheddi Jagan Revisited: Photo Exhibition by Eddi Rodney
Last week Monday March 19, 2009 a photographic exhibition that feature various stages of Dr Cheddi Jagan’s Life, political activities and the struggle of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) which he founded and led for decades, was opened at the National Library, Georgetown.
This exhibition was sponsored by the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre and all of the prints, mounted on single sheet panels have been seen by the public on previous occasions.
What is striking about these images, especially for students and others who may know relatively little of the foremost Guyanese Freedom Fighter, is the fact that Dr Jagan always appears as though he was actually evolving with the given process.
If we take three or four examples:
The 1943-1949 years, described as “Getting In Struggle” reveals the early Cheddi Jagan – the radical people’s dentist and politician.
“The Third PPP Government, 1961-1964” gives the viewer some idea, some mental picture of what was the reality of the PPP as a “party in government” after it had confronted severe challenges from Anglo-American imperialism and its local allies.
“The Struggle Continues – 1964-1969” as well as “The 1980s,” all form part of a broader assembly of pictures that depict Dr Jagan in his public role (speaking at the East Coast, Lusignan, GAWU rally for instance), or at the head of a PPP March for the democratisation of the electoral process.
But there are also other scenes showing him relaxing with his family, on holiday with his wife Janet Jagan in Egypt, playing with his grandchildren and at his desk and office at his residence.
Photographs from the period 1992-1997 “Victory at the 1992 Elections” as well “Father of the Guyanese Nation” are of a special interest to young people, and these may well irk those who have always ranked the PPP as “communist” and concerned only with personal power.
Viewers can see Dr Jagan with the Tanzanian ex-President Julius Nyerere and Martin Carter. There are prints of his speaking to (then) United Nations Secretary General, Mr Boutros Ghali, and also posing for a group photograph with his first Cabinet Ministers appointed after October 5, 1992.
Obviously, those prints over time would require renovating as the monochrome process lasts for about 15 years or at the most two decades. This exhibition provides an excellent insight into how Dr Jagan was involved at the leadership level, the role of photographs in identifying personalities and associations, and most of all the legitimacy of the nation building process coupled to the development of a new national culture.