tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/african-photography-81962/articles
African photography – The Conversation
2023-12-05T13:38:37Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/216493
2023-12-05T13:38:37Z
2023-12-05T13:38:37Z
Mohamed Amin was a famous Kenyan photojournalist – there’s much more to his work than images of tragedy
<p>Kenyan photojournalist <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/story/mohamed-39-mo-39-amin-photojournalist-extraordinaire-mohamed-amin-foundation/YQWRSpXAe2iFhA?hl=en">Mohamed Amin</a> (1943-1996) rose to fame for documenting the 1984 <a href="https://www.worldvision.org/disaster-relief-news-stories/1980s-ethiopia-famine-facts">famine</a> in neighbouring Ethiopia with powerful images of the tragedy. He also captured the Ethiopian people’s suffering during the brutal reign of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mengistu-Haile-Mariam">Mengistu Haile Mariam</a>. These <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/story/how-mo-amin-inspired-change-in-ethiopia-mohamed-amin-foundation/xwUxTsVZRpdvlA?hl=en">images</a>, <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/reporting-ethiopian-famine/">broadcast</a> by the BBC, shocked the global public and had a significant <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2014/oct/22/ethiopian-famine-report-influence-modern-coverage">international impact</a>. They mobilised governments, individuals and institutions. This even led to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Live-Aid">Live Aid</a> – the famous 1985 benefit concert to raise funds for victims of the famine.</p>
<p>As a result, <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/The_Man_who_Moved_the_World.html?id=JhQxAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">some</a> <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/6/30/mohamed-amin-the-kenyan-who-moved-the-world">sources</a> refer to Amin as “the man who moved the world”, reducing his visual work to this tragedy. As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Tamara+Antona+Jimeno&btnG=">lecturer and researcher</a> in journalism, and a photographer and scholar completing a <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ismael-crespo-martinez-1245765">PhD</a> on Amin, we recently published a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311983.2023.2236395">paper</a> on Amin’s vast earlier body of work.</p>
<p>We wanted to highlight that Amin had already undertaken intense and prestigious work in Africa, Asia and the Middle East before these photos of tragedy. His visual collection, spanning from 1956 to 1996, comprises over 8,000 hours of video and approximately 3.5 million photographs. </p>
<p>It’s important that people understand the greater scope of Amin’s images: he captured the first shots of African lives after European imperialism. If French photographer <a href="https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/henri-cartier-bresson/">Henri Cartier-Bresson</a> was considered the eye of the world, Amin is the eye of postcolonial Africa. </p>
<h2>International fame</h2>
<p>On 23 October 1984, the UK public broadcaster, the BBC, aired a shocking <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYOj_6OYuJc">report</a> by journalist Michael Buerk, featuring images by Amin, on the Korem refugee camp in Ethiopia: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Death is all around. A child or an adult dies every 20 minutes. Korem, an insignificant town, has become a place of sorrow. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ethiopia was under the Marxist dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam, who had ousted the last Ethiopian emperor, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Haile-Selassie-I">Haile Selassie</a>, through a military coup in 1974. In 1984, the country still had restricted areas for foreign media, but the BBC correspondent had been taken to the Ethiopian highlands by connections of Amin, a Kenyan cameraman and photojournalist.</p>
<p>The impact of the report was extraordinary. A story set in a developing country with no British angle was viewed by <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/6/30/mohamed-amin-the-kenyan-who-moved-the-world">nearly a third</a> of the adult British population. The images were quickly replicated by other international TV networks. Soon enough <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2014/oct/22/ethiopian-famine-report-influence-modern-coverage">425 TV channels</a> worldwide had broadcast Amin’s images to a global audience of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/6/30/mohamed-amin-the-kenyan-who-moved-the-world">470 million</a> people. “Mo” Amin was making history. He had become the cameraman of the Ethiopian famine.</p>
<p>The images catalysed the <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/live-aid-concert">largest</a> humanitarian relief effort the world has ever witnessed. Public visibility turned Amin into an international celebrity. He and his family were <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/mohamed-amin-and-family-at-the-white-house-with-george-bush-mohamed-amin/dAE7LYGk2UT_BQ">received</a> at the White House in the US in 1985. At the ceremony, US vice-president George Bush officially presented the cameraman with a symbolic cheque for two billion dollars in humanitarian aid for Africa.</p>
<h2>Earlier work</h2>
<p>Interest in Amin’s work stems from three main aspects. The first is his vast and diverse body of work. The second is his focus. He centred on Africa, outside the western media’s epicentre, with a pan-African perspective. The third is that his images capture postcolonial events as they unfolded, in a time before the mass globalisation of the internet and social media. His postcolonial coverage of African dictators, such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Bedel-Bokassa">Jean-Bédel Bokassa</a> (in the Central African Republic), <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mobutu-Sese-Seko">Mobutu Sese Seko</a> (Congo) and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Idi-Amin">Idi Amin</a> (Uganda) exemplify the importance of his earlier work.</p>
<p>The two <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311983.2023.2236395">main themes</a> of his work are postcolonialism and everyday Africa. From the 1960s to the early 1980s, in the early period of African independence, his response to the western media’s portrayal of Africa was to create photo books that showed everyday African life from an African perspective. These publications allowed him to give his work a personal and pan-African orientation, freeing it from the daily urgency of serving western news interests. He created a total of 55 books of his own work. </p>
<p>His book <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Cradle_of_Mankind/_qMvAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=Cradle%20of%20Mankind%20%20mohamed%20amin">Cradle of Mankind</a> (1981) was the outcome of an expedition he led, considered to be one of the first circumnavigations of Lake Turkana and its desert to the north of Kenya. The aim of this adventure was to document the life of the six tribes living along the shores of the lake. The book was accompanied by exhibitions in Nairobi and London. The expedition earned him the honour of being admitted as a member of the Royal Geographical Society of London in 1982.</p>
<p>His documenting of African dictators reveals another extraordinary body of work, the camera up close and personal. The dictator Idi Amin, for example, granted him three exclusive personal interviews (in 1971, 1980 and 1985).</p>
<p>He also journeyed far beyond the continent. His works on Asia and the Middle East include books on Mecca (1980) and The Beauty of Pakistan (1983), among others. </p>
<h2>Amin’s legacy</h2>
<p>There is a constant stream of references to Amin’s work in the media, a couple of biographies have been written about him, and his images are constantly used to illustrate books and articles on tourism, nature or history. However, there are few academic studies of his work and fewer still international retrospective exhibitions.</p>
<p>Currently, it’s possible to access just a small portion of his work online. In 2021, 25 years after his death, the <a href="https://moaminfoundation.org/about-us/">Mohamed Amin Foundation</a> made 6,553 digitised images available in 58 thematic reports and galleries through <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/project/mohamed-amin-archive">Google Arts & Culture</a>. This is a small step towards showing his complete body of work.</p>
<p>The global impact of Amin’s photos and videos concerning the Ethiopian famine is undeniable. However, it’s important to emphasise that his broader legacy constitutes one of the single most extensive historical photographic archives of Africa ever created – and it deserves greater attention.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216493/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
His photos and videos depicting postcolonialism and everyday life in Africa have been overlooked.
Tamara Antona Jimeno, Lecturer at Journalism and Global Communication, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Ismael Martínez Sánchez, PhD Candidate in Journalism, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/209570
2023-07-14T13:04:52Z
2023-07-14T13:04:52Z
A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography – Tate Modern show celebrates new generation of artists, but misses a trick
<p>The last large survey exhibition of African photography by a major western gallery was <a href="https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/insight-african-photographers-1940-to-the-present">In/Sight</a> at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1996. Twenty-seven years later, Tate Modern is introducing a British audience to the next generation of African photographers. </p>
<p>With such a long gap, there are high expectations for <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/contemporary-african-photography-a-world-in-common">A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography</a>. And the exhibition faces many curatorial challenges. </p>
<p>For most British visitors, this exhibition serves as an enlightening journey that challenges their perspective. It confronts and dismantles enduring colonial stereotypes associated with Africa. Simultaneously, it stands as a long-awaited affirmation of African photographers, validating their unique use of the medium.</p>
<p>The show’s curator, Osei Bonsu, developed three major themes – “identity and tradition”, “counter histories” and “imagined futures”. The 36 featured photographers tell stories of a new and confident Africa. It’s an Africa that celebrates its spirituality and is untangling itself from its colonial past. This is awe-inspiring work, by a new generation of artists who draw on the rich social and political history of the continent to tell their stories.</p>
<p>When entering the exhibition, I was immediately taken in by a series of large portraits: <a href="https://georgeosodi.photoshelter.com/portfolio/G0000X9MCoZDi.bE">Nigerian Monarchs by George Osodi</a>. The formality of the images speaks to the importance of these rulers as custodians of cultural heritage – even though their powers were eroded during British colonial rule. </p>
<p>The portrait of <a href="https://www.artsy.net/artwork/george-osodi-hrm-agbogidi-obi-james-ikechukwu-anyasi-ll-obi-of-idumuje-unor">Obi Anyasi II</a>, the longest reigning African king, is a clever comment on Nigeria’s past. His stern gaze competes with that of Queen Elizabeth II, whose portrait is printed on his gown. In the exhibition catalogue, Osodi explains that documenting and archiving culture is “key to understanding cultural origins, and thus developing a sense of identity”.</p>
<p>In the same room is Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai’s series <a href="https://www.artsy.net/artwork/kudzanai-chiurai-we-live-in-silence-iv-1">We Live in Silence</a>. These works are a reminder that Christian missionaries contributed to the colonial occupation of the continent and were instrumental in dismantling pre-colonial societies, in which women had often been powerful and influential figures. </p>
<p>Inspired by Bible scenes, Chiurai’s work focuses on modern African women. He reclaims their space in the historic narrative of the continent. </p>
<p>At the same time, female artists are still struggling to claiming their space in the exhibition as only 12 women featured. Gender balance should have been a fundamental consideration in the curation of this exhibition, as it is crucial to foster equal representation of African women in the arts.</p>
<h2>Dialogue and consent</h2>
<p><a href="https://wuraogunji.com/home.html">Wura-Natasha Ogunji’s work</a> stood out as the only piece in the show that documented a response from Africans and engaged the African audience directly. </p>
<p>In her performance video, Will I Still Carry Water When I Am a Dead Woman? a group of masked women drag golden water canisters through the busy streets of Lagos, Nigeria. The reactions of the local people underscored art’s potential to challenge the undervaluing of female labour. It provokes dialogue where performance art is not widely understood or appreciated.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Will I Still Carry Water When I Am a Dead Woman? by Wura-Natasha Ogunji.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Ogunji, born in Nigeria, received her BA from Stanford University and an MFA from San Jose State University in the US. This highlights yet another issue with the roster of photographers in the exhibition. A considerable number have well-established ties with European and American art institutions. </p>
<p>Also, a significant portion have pursued their studies in Europe and the US, are represented by international galleries and maintain a dual presence between two continents. They are part of the global art scene that sees African art as a growing investment opportunity. There’s a risk that will result in the best examples of African art leaving the continent. As French gallery owner Cécile Fakhoury <a href="https://news.artnet.com/market/1-54-marrakesh-2020-1784178">has observed</a>: “If we keep going as we are, in ten or 20 years we will see all the major pieces in foreign countries.” </p>
<p>As this intensifies, it perpetuates a resource vacuum for local artists solely residing and working in Africa. It highlights the continuous underfunding of the cultural sector by most African governments and the lack of globally recognised art institutions on the continent. </p>
<p>Sadly, Tate Modern has missed a trick here. It could have more purposefully supported and celebrated the creation of local African art and included material that challenged its own position (as well as that of other western art institutions) in the global art market. As it is, I am provoked to think that A World in Common is a European exhibition with African content, rather than an exhibition that invites uncomfortable conversations about the function of institutions in the effort to decolonise our understanding of African art. </p>
<p>In the final two rooms, artists are imagining futures for Africa. Kiripi Katembo’s beautiful photographs of Kinshasa reflected in rainwater puddles capture urban life through a surreal mirror. Andrew Esiebo’s large images create a momentary stillness in the ever-changing architecture and landscape of Lagos. They comment on the “endless juxtapositions that exist in the city, between past and present, modernity and tradition”, as Esiebe observes in the catalogue.</p>
<p>What struck me most about the exhibition was the consent implicitly and explicitly expressed in all the works by collaborating with the sitters and avoiding works created through covert observations. </p>
<p>By working with masks, mirrors, self-portraiture or consenting sitters, the featured artists all circumnavigate the historic and often still-present exploitative relationship between the camera and the African continent. This is a decolonial approach to photography we can all learn from, but it also poses the question of how African photographers will make visible the richness of everyday life on the continent.</p>
<p>On the epilogue text panel, Senegalese writer and academic Felwine Sarr calls for “Africans to think and formulate their own future”. The 36 exhibiting artists definitely do that. But the curatorial challenges are manifold. My observations are an attempt to move the conversation beyond the thought-provoking work of the photographers and towards challenging the role of Tate Modern. </p>
<p><em>A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography is on at the Tate Modern until January 4 2024.</em></p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight,
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<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209570/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kerstin Hacker receives funding from Educational Partnerships in Africa Grant (2009 - 2012)</span></em></p>
A World in Common is a European exhibition with African content, rather than a space that invites conversations and engagement that go beyond the images themselves.
Kerstin Hacker, Senior Lecturer, Photography, Anglia Ruskin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/203587
2023-04-25T13:51:58Z
2023-04-25T13:51:58Z
Tender Photo: the newsletter that’s creating a new conversation about African photography
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521584/original/file-20230418-14-bd5fpk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The brains behind the popular photography newsletter is Nigerian writer, editor, publisher, and art critic Emmanuel Iduma.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simone Padovani/Awakening/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Nigeria’s <a href="https://emmanueliduma.com/Biography">Emmanuel Iduma</a> is <a href="https://emmanueliduma.com">many things</a>: writer, editor, publisher, critic and photographer. In 2022 he combined these skills to introduce a newsletter, <a href="https://tenderphoto.substack.com/about">Tender Photo</a>, sent to subscribers twice a week. It has since become an important platform for African photographers, writers, critics and curators. Published on Substack, it has become so widely popular that it was a featured publication on the online newsletter support site.</em></p>
<p><em>Iduma is the author of three books: <a href="https://emmanueliduma.com/I-Am-Still-With-You">I Am Still With You</a>, a memoir on the Nigerian Civil War; <a href="https://emmanueliduma.com/A-Stranger-s-Pose">A Stranger’s Pose</a>, a travelogue; and <a href="https://emmanueliduma.com/Farad">The Sound of Things to Come</a>, a novel. He’s also a recipient of the prestigious <a href="https://windhamcampbell.org/festival/2022/recipients/iduma-emmanuel">Windham-Campbell Prize</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>With Tender Photo, Iduma is drawn to the narrative potential of photography and the hidden elements behind it. In the newsletter Iduma chooses a photo and writes briefly about what it calls to mind for him. The featured photographer then writes about why and how they took the photo. Literary culture scholar Tinashe Mushakavanhu asked him about the project.</em></p>
<h2>What was the impulse to start a forum like Tender Photo?</h2>
<p>In mid-2021, while at an advanced stage of work on my <a href="https://www.workman.com/products/i-am-still-with-you/hardback">recent book</a>, I felt I needed to tinker with the form with which I published my writing on photography. For the previous seven years, I had written <a href="https://yalereview.org/article/emmanuel-iduma-tender-light">essays</a> – or stories – that foregrounded my voice as a writer of <a href="https://emmanueliduma.com/Criticism">criticism</a>. </p>
<p>I wondered how else I could show my interest in photography, outside my predilections. The newsletter emerged from the need to free my writing from any unnecessary jargon I had acquired in the years of writing for a targeted, art-world audience. Put simply, it was an attempt to find a new path in my work with photographs. It features the work of early to mid-career photographers on the African continent. </p>
<h2>Why was it necessary to generate a conversation between a critic and the photographers?</h2>
<p>The necessity I felt was to be a middleman in the exchange between a photographer and the photograph they took. As such, the frame of that correspondence was important. How could I get the photographer to speak freely and without gobbledygook on the image in question? My aim has been to present narratives on photography mainly from the point of view of practitioners of the medium, prefaced by short captions that illustrate the possibility of keen observation.</p>
<h2>How did you decide on the format?</h2>
<p>At this point – nearing the 60th edition – I have chosen to publish only one photograph per feature. But in the first year of the newsletter, I included two other photographs. The idea at the time was to show all three images I selected from the photographer’s portfolio, pointing to some range in style. </p>
<p>In this second year, I have pared things down further, seeing that the feedback I have received shows that people enjoy the concision in my presentation. My overall aim is to allow people to enjoy the process of looking at a photograph, like repeated strokes of a caress.</p>
<h2>You recently introduced guests who write about some of the photos you’ve written about. Why?</h2>
<p>There are two main reasons why this expansion was inevitable. First, I knew from the start that by the end of a year I would have a decent number of images that spoke to each other in unexpected ways. </p>
<p>In addition, I wanted to broaden the scope of engagement by bringing in other voices, mainly readers who read the newsletter with an appreciable level of frequency. Thankfully, my instincts have proved right. I am moved by the commentary written by the guests, the depth and acuity, and surprised to note the photographs that have recurred in the selections.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn0CWKroUN5/?hl=en","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>What is the state of art criticism and photographic writing on the continent?</h2>
<p>It is difficult for me to speak in any generalising manner about the state of photography criticism, mainly because I am often wary of sweeping, continental assessments. I prefer to work with a sense of urgency on a personal level: that is, what do I feel is required of me, given my training, inclinations, and gifts? In this sense, I am quite interested in broadening conversations on criticism on the continent, producing work for mainstream publications – such as a memoir, literary journal, or newspaper – by paying homage to the work done in academic or theoretical circles.</p>
<p>My hope is that more self-driven initiatives would emerge, diversifying and amplifying the work of photographers and critics, even if they last for a short time.</p>
<h2>Is Tender Photo an agenda-setting platform?</h2>
<p>My goal is to present photographs by artists born or based on the African continent; the agenda ends there. If I can point to the diversity of the work produced on the continent – geographically and stylistically – I might manage to challenge reductive epistemologies. </p>
<h2>Do you mean views that reduce African photography by lumping it together? And often this is from a white gaze. How can our generation deal with this?</h2>
<p>I suspect there is a greater number of photographers who identify as African or Black than at any point in the history of photography. Museums in the west are now routinely organising surveys of photography from the continent, with an array of forms and subject matter on display. Both facts can be considered progress. And since every generation must discover its mission, I’m more interested in discerning the tasks that fall to us when there is the growing knowledge of “a black gaze”.</p>
<h2>What is the end game for Tender Photo? A book? Exhibition? Archive? Web platform?</h2>
<p>All these options you mention are on the table. While I am deeply grateful for the reception the newsletter has gotten, my obligation is to consistency, and to unhurried work. You’ll see.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203587/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tinashe Mushakavanhu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In less than a year the newsletter has become important and influential, offering a new way of appreciating African photography.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Junior Research Fellow, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/200842
2023-03-06T15:01:22Z
2023-03-06T15:01:22Z
The real Johannesburg: 6 powerful photos from a gritty new book on the city
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513197/original/file-20230302-29-6rlu6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An abandoned gold mine in Johannesburg, South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Lewis/Wake Up, This Is Joburg</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/wake-up-this-is-joburg">Wake Up, This is Joburg</a> is a collaboration between photographer Mark Lewis and urban planner and writer Tanya Zack. Striking images and beautiful texts follow 10 stories the team discovered in urban Johannesburg, South Africa. Each chapter captures many overlapping stories that come together around a character, a place or an activity. The book is an ethnographic portrait of one of Africa’s most vibrant and intriguing cities. We asked for the stories behind six of its images.</em></p>
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<h2>1. Chopping s'kop</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513187/original/file-20230302-18-ot9q1p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Several men chop and handle meat on makeshift tables, animal parts strewn on the floor." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513187/original/file-20230302-18-ot9q1p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513187/original/file-20230302-18-ot9q1p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513187/original/file-20230302-18-ot9q1p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513187/original/file-20230302-18-ot9q1p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513187/original/file-20230302-18-ot9q1p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513187/original/file-20230302-18-ot9q1p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513187/original/file-20230302-18-ot9q1p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chopping cowheads in Kazerne parking garage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Lewis/Wake Up, This Is Joburg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most marginal of the activities and spaces the stories explore is the informal butchers who chop up cow heads in a disused parking garage in the heart of the inner city. The condemned building is next to formal structures and within view of banking head offices. </p>
<p>The cow heads, or s'kop, are bought for R10 (US$0.55) each by nearby formal butcheries and delivered to them in shopping trolleys. Every part is sold in this marginal economy. Flesh is stripped off the skull, bones are taken to be crushed for bone meal, and skins enter a unique processing operation in invisible spaces in the city and transformed into an edible form. </p>
<p>Andile Nkomo from KwaZulu-Natal province is the most muscular of the six butchers on the day we first visit and, we soon discover, the most active. But he admits his output varies. On mornings after he’s worked as a bouncer at a <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/africa/south-africa/articles/10-things-to-know-about-hillbrow-johannesburgs-notorious-neighbourhood/">Hillbrow</a> nightclub, he is not in peak form. “On a good day I chop 60 heads,” he says as he slams his axe repeatedly into skulls on the wooden industrial cable spool that is the butchers’ block.</p>
<h2>2. Breakfast on the run</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513182/original/file-20230302-28-jk5p08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman stands in a dark space under a bridge in a beam of bright light, taking bread from a bag behind a table used for food preparation." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513182/original/file-20230302-28-jk5p08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513182/original/file-20230302-28-jk5p08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513182/original/file-20230302-28-jk5p08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513182/original/file-20230302-28-jk5p08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513182/original/file-20230302-28-jk5p08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513182/original/file-20230302-28-jk5p08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513182/original/file-20230302-28-jk5p08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Monica Chauke serves customised breakfasts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Lewis/Wake Up, This Is Joburg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Competition within the informal economy is tight. At the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-minibus-taxi-industry-has-been-marginalised-for-too-long-this-must-change-142060">minibus taxi</a> binding point Zola, micro-entrepreneurs offer barber services and sell food, snacks, socks, window wipers, mobile phone accessories and bumper stickers.</p>
<p>Stallholder Monica Chauke, originally from Limpopo province, is unperturbed by the competition for the appetites of the 600 taxi drivers. She knows that by midday she will have sold out of her unique offering and made her US$16 daily profit. Her niche is simple: she serves only breakfast. But there’s nothing simple about it. Monica has, over four years, worked out who likes what and caters to the specific tastes of her customers. This means making six egg-and-tomato, three cheese-and-tomato and four chicken-mayonnaise sandwiches, as well as six cheeseburgers each morning. And baking scones, frying balls of dough called <a href="https://theculturecook.com/recipe-afrikaner-vetkoek.html">vetkoek</a>, preparing a soup of beans and bones and making a meat stew. Her commitment to providing variety no matter how small the quantity has earned her loyal customers.</p>
<p>Monica wakes at 2am to prepare and package the food and the equipment she brings here. “I want to work here because no one is controlling me. It’s for myself,” she says. “My boyfriend brings and fetches me each day.” In his car? “No, in my car. He drives it.”</p>
<h2>3. Bed room</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513185/original/file-20230302-14-irnppr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An older woman rests in bed, looking directly at the camera without smiling, papers stuck to the wall above her." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513185/original/file-20230302-14-irnppr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513185/original/file-20230302-14-irnppr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513185/original/file-20230302-14-irnppr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513185/original/file-20230302-14-irnppr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513185/original/file-20230302-14-irnppr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513185/original/file-20230302-14-irnppr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513185/original/file-20230302-14-irnppr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Birthial Gxaleka runs a shelter in a one-bedroom apartment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Lewis/Wake Up, This Is Joburg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From her bed in a small Hillbrow apartment, Birthial Gxaleka – a nurse from the Eastern Cape province – runs a non-governmental organisation and shelter. Her tenants share her one-bedroomed space, sleeping and living on a large raft of beds that leaves only a narrow corridor of standing room. At any one time, there are up to 34 residents, because it is rare for Birthial to turn anyone away. </p>
<p>Each person wants to make their way in the world: find a job, reconnect with lost family, get access to healthcare or simply secure a decent place to sleep. </p>
<p>In the inner city’s high-rise flatland, at human densities 10 times greater than Hong Kong, people find ways to get on with things.</p>
<h2>4. Under the city</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513188/original/file-20230302-24-3c9y13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man with a spry expression leans against a broken balustrade, his tattered clothes covered in dust." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513188/original/file-20230302-24-3c9y13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513188/original/file-20230302-24-3c9y13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513188/original/file-20230302-24-3c9y13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513188/original/file-20230302-24-3c9y13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513188/original/file-20230302-24-3c9y13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513188/original/file-20230302-24-3c9y13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513188/original/file-20230302-24-3c9y13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nandos Simao digs for gold in abandoned mines.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Lewis/Wake Up, This Is Joburg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“This park is closed until further notice. Entry strictly forbidden.” This is the sign at the entrance to the place where the metal that would make this the wealthiest gold-producing city on the planet was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Johannesburg-South-Africa/History">first discovered</a>. It does not deter anyone. Least of all those with the grit to seek a living or a fortune in the abandoned mine shafts of the Witwatersrand reef.</p>
<p>Known as zama zamas (those who keep trying), they work the dumps and cavities underneath the city. We visit the Langlaagte belt, which contains more unmined gold than any other vein in Johannesburg’s gold reef. They call it FNB (First National Bank). Here zama zamas of all ages, backgrounds and ethnicity use the same ancient pick and shovel method to wrestle with the rock face. </p>
<p>It is Nandos Simao, leaning in elegant repose against the remains of a concrete wall, who catches our attention. The 23-year-old Mozambican lives in the Orange Farm informal settlement with two fellow miners, his cousins. The youngest is 17.</p>
<p>There are many ways to die underground. But it’s a livelihood on which whole settlements depend. Indeed, MaLetsatsi Mamogele is digging for gold under her shack in Fleurhof, a working class suburb west of Johannesburg. </p>
<h2>5. Good riddance</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513191/original/file-20230302-28-6nw65j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="In dim light, men pull trolleys with shiny containers loaded with cardboard." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513191/original/file-20230302-28-6nw65j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513191/original/file-20230302-28-6nw65j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513191/original/file-20230302-28-6nw65j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513191/original/file-20230302-28-6nw65j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513191/original/file-20230302-28-6nw65j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513191/original/file-20230302-28-6nw65j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513191/original/file-20230302-28-6nw65j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lucas Ngwenya recycles cardboard.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Lewis/Wake Up, This Is Joburg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Young Mozambican Lucas Ngwenya and his two South African friends have lined up. It’s 6am. There’s a cold wind blowing on this open piece of land suspended between the private estate of the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/nicky-oppenheimer/?sh=604e34ce3b93">Oppenheimers</a>, South Africa’s wealthiest family, and the headquarters of Hollard Insurance. It’s 4°C as the men begin their 5km trip to the recycling depot in Newtown to sell the materials they’ve collected from suburban dustbins over a fortnight. It will take two-and-a-half hours to drag their gargantuan loads.</p>
<p>Lucas seemingly has the lightest burden, but points out that the cardboard, which occupies double the capacity of his plastic quilted bag, will weigh in at over 150kg. The plastic bottles and white paper will bring this to 265kg. His body mass is 61kg. When he arrives at the depot he will be asked for R10 “for cool drink” as he cashes in his load. Because, the cashier says, she has been generous with the amounts she has recorded.</p>
<h2>6. Tony dreams in yellow and blue</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513192/original/file-20230302-17-c8ng8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A visually rich exterior of a house with vintage cars, a mural of a town near water, a windmill, a statue of a tower, concrete wagon wheels and creepers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513192/original/file-20230302-17-c8ng8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513192/original/file-20230302-17-c8ng8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513192/original/file-20230302-17-c8ng8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513192/original/file-20230302-17-c8ng8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513192/original/file-20230302-17-c8ng8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513192/original/file-20230302-17-c8ng8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513192/original/file-20230302-17-c8ng8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tony Martins creates a palace.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Lewis/Wake Up, This Is Joburg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tony Martins built his first house in Madeira, Portugal, in his early 20s – because his wife’s mother “wouldn’t let me take her until I had a house to live in”. Some 30 years later he’s transforming his modest home in Johannesburg’s “old south” into a veritable castle – using objects he finds at waste dumps. Tony is an outsider artist.</p>
<p>He admits he cannot stop himself. “I sleep for two or three hours, and then I wake and think what else I can do. Then I have to do them in the day.”</p>
<p>The house is a wonder of lights and murals, of manikins in domes and on motorbikes on the roof, of a traffic light and windmill and of multiple staircases with balustrades fashioned from found tennis racquets and bicycle wheels. It is the sort of delightful outcome of a city not intervening in the authentic expression and private worlds that are possible in urban spaces where excess, waste and cosmopolitanism collide.</p>
<p><em>The book is <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/wake-up-this-is-joburg">available</a> from Duke University Press</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200842/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tanya Zack does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
From butchers to hawkers, and shelters to miners, this book reveals the informal economy and texture of the city.
Tanya Zack, Visiting researcher, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197647
2023-01-20T08:37:06Z
2023-01-20T08:37:06Z
Ernest Cole: South Africa’s most famous photobook has been republished after 55 years
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505098/original/file-20230118-7572-54i5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Men wait for at a railway station for transport to a mine.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ernest Cole/© Ernest Cole Family Trust/Courtesy Wits Historical Papers/Photography Legacy Project</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Photographer <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ernest-cole">Ernest Cole</a> was born in 1940 in the Pretoria township of Eersterust, just before <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> was formally introduced in South Africa in 1948. </p>
<p>He was 20 when thousands of people gathered outside a police station in Sharpeville township to protest against being forced to carry <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994">pass books</a> by the white minority government. On that day at least 69 people were shot dead, hundreds were injured, and a state of emergency was declared. The <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville Massacre</a> is <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sharpeville-9780199642441?cc=gb&lang=en&">regarded</a> as a turning point in the struggle for liberation in South Africa. It marked the beginning of a decades-long period in which images of human rights abuses in South Africa would rarely be out of the international news. </p>
<p>Cole’s images were prominent in this coverage. But, unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not focus on documenting protests. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with the words " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aperture Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead, Cole produced hundreds of photographs that portrayed the structural violence of apartheid in fine detail. He aimed to publish these images in a photobook that he intended to circulate internationally. In 1966, Cole left South Africa on an exit permit. He would never return. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.protestinphotobook.com/post/house-of-bondage">House of Bondage</a>, Cole’s unflinching and comprehensive indictment of apartheid, was published in 1967 in the US and then in the UK. When it first appeared, the photobook was banned in South Africa but some of its images found their way back into the country through resistance publications. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/santu-mofokeng-master-photographer-who-chased-down-shadows-131065">Santu Mofokeng: master photographer who chased down shadows</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The book is now widely available again, with a <a href="https://aperture.org/books/ernest-cole-house-of-bondage/">new edition</a> on the market. It returns Cole’s profound visual essay to the public eye and draws attention to his incisive critique of the violence of everyday life under apartheid.</p>
<h2>A landmark book</h2>
<p>After leaving South Africa, Cole continued to work as a photographer in the US and spent time in Sweden. By the 1980s, House of Bondage was out of print. The whereabouts of the photographs he produced in the US in the 1960s and 1970s – some commissioned by the Ford Foundation and the United States Information Agency – remained unknown. Then, in 2017, at least part of his archive was located in Sweden and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/photographer-ernest-cole-bondage-and-freedom-discovery-trove-negatives-game-changer-ivor">returned</a> to Cole’s family.</p>
<p>The resurfacing of more than 60,000 negatives as well as other documents, including notebooks, has led to the publication of the new edition of Cole’s landmark book by the <a href="https://aperture.org/about">Aperture</a> Foundation.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young man with a small beard and wearing a jacket looks directly into camera, unsmiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ernest Cole.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Ernest Cole Family Trust/Wits Historical Papers/Photography Legacy Project</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It includes three new introductory essays, but the core of the book remains unchanged, a deliberate, relentless journey through the broken world apartheid made. It’s divided into 15 sections including The Mines; Police and Passes; Education for Servitude; <a href="https://ocula.com/art-galleries/goodman-gallery/artworks/ernest-cole/heirs-of-poverty-from-house-of-bondage/">Heirs of Poverty</a>; and Banishment, all seen through Cole’s unblinking eye. </p>
<p>The new edition also contains a section of previously unpublished images that Cole appeared to have intended for House of Bondage, but may have omitted in order not to detract from the work’s primary message. This section, Black Ingenuity, includes 30 photos of musicians, dancers, artists and boxers. They convey how spaces of sociality and creativity were forged in spite of apartheid. </p>
<h2>The homecoming</h2>
<p>A selection of the material returned to the Cole family has been digitised and made <a href="https://www.plparchive.com/ernest-cole-main-page/ec-archive/">available online</a> by the <a href="https://www.plparchive.com">Photography Legacy Project</a> and the <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/historicalpapers/">Historical Papers Research Archive</a>. </p>
<p>Among Cole’s hundreds of letters and press cuttings is a tattered notebook of handwritten observations about the hardships of black life under apartheid. In this small book Cole chronicles the experiences of those he met during his quest to exhaustively document South Africa’s dehumanising “crucible of racism”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An old-fashioned notebook with spiral spine bears neat cursive handwriting that tells of the struggle by a family to send their boys to school." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cole’s notebook.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Ernest Cole Family Trust. Courtesy Wits Historical Papers/Photography Legacy Project</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cole reveals himself to be a gifted journalist with a keen eye for the particular and the archive reveals the extensive research that went into making House of Bondage. His careful notes include the stories of mothers, workers and teachers … How a young man lost his passbook and was too afraid to report it and so could not write his exams. Why there are no desks and chairs for the children at school. How a woman has only ever been able to buy a single skirt for herself during her entire working life. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A policeman in old-fashioned uniform puts a hand on the shoulder or a young man in worker's clothes. Men in suits look on idly, hands in their pockets." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A young man is stopped for his pass book by police.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ernest Cole/© Ernest Cole Family Trust. Courtesy Wits Historical Papers/Photography Legacy Project</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cole spent decades as a stateless person and, tormented by the racism he endured in South Africa as well as in the US and Europe, suffered <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/ERNEST%20COLE-gunilla.pdf">psychological breakdowns</a>. From the mid-1970s, he was homeless and spent time living in the subways in New York and occasionally at a shelter or the houses of friends. He died of pancreatic cancer in exile in 1990. </p>
<h2>A better world</h2>
<p>In his essay in the new edition of House of Bondage, anti-apartheid activist and poet <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/mongane-wally-serote-1944">Mongane Wally Serote</a> observes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>No matter the very dire challenges of being poor, discriminated against, and being, by law, objects of exploitation and oppression, the people in the photographs by Ernest Cole claim life and living.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He cuts to the heart of Cole’s project: the imperative to make a better world. He argues that to see these images is not only to be reminded of the brutality of apartheid but to be shocked into recognising how the structural violence of the past lives on: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Of course, the question which must follow after seeing the horror depicted in Cole’s photographs is: why, why if there are human beings living in horror, have those conditions not been challenged and changed? Why, why are those conditions so persistent?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At least part of the answer to Serote’s lament lies in the fact that those responsible for engineering and implementing the iniquitous apartheid system have never been held to account. Cole’s book is a powerful reminder not only of what apartheid was, but of the work that remains to be done in order to dismantle the house of bondage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197647/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kylie Thomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Cole was a master of portraying the violence of apartheid through scenes of everyday life.
Kylie Thomas, Senior Researcher, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/184493
2022-06-07T15:32:43Z
2022-06-07T15:32:43Z
Legendary Mike Mzileni captured South Africa’s history and also its musical stars
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467410/original/file-20220607-14-d2ddkd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mike Mzileni at home in 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screenshot City Press/News24 Video</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/sophie-thoko-mgcina-1938">Sophie Mgcina</a>, composer, educationist and performer, gazes out from the page, uncompromising and direct. She’s just swung around from the piano to face us; behind her, a score sits open. It’s 1993, and she’s been <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/A_Common_Hunger_to_Sing.html?id=PisMAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">telling</a> journalist <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/voices/zuluboy-zb-arthur-molefe-a-writer-who-made-us-proud-20190611">Z.B. Molefe</a>, “I had to work like 10 black women to get where I am today.” But if she hadn’t said it, photographer Mike Ndumiso Mzileni’s accompanying image would have stated it loud and clear.</p>
<p>Respected elder statesman of press photographers Mzileni has <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/voices/veteran-photographer-mike-mzileni-died-with-no-regrets-20220602">died</a> at the age of 80, after a series of debilitating ailments, but not before an <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/trending/veteran-lensman-mike-mzileni-says-cameras-are-more-powerful-than-guns-at-new-exhibition-launch-20211213">exhibition</a> in January in Johannesburg had finally brought together both facets of his long career: news photography that captured history, and music photography where artists had the visual space to be who they really were.</p>
<h2>Photojournalism</h2>
<p>Mzileni was a photojournalist <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/trending/veteran-lensman-mike-mzileni-says-cameras-are-more-powerful-than-guns-at-new-exhibition-launch-20211213">described</a> by one reporter as “one of the last of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668">Drum-era</a> soldiers credited as black journalism’s pathfinders”. He began working in the 1970s, during the turbulence of South Africa’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> years. He documented black life under white minority rule, one of the photographers who <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVPCIgLWowo&t=56s">captured</a> the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">Soweto Uprising</a> of 1976. </p>
<p>Ndumiso Mzileni was born in Stutterheim in the Eastern Cape on 16 January 1942. His work featured in publications including The World, Drum, the Rand Daily Mail and the Sunday Times. His longest stint was at City Press, which he joined on its establishment in 1982, rising to become chief photographer by his retirement in 2000.</p>
<p>Tributes were not slow to pour in: just about every young photographer who encountered him had memories of his kindness and support for their own careers, of the high newsroom standards he set and of the steadfast Africanist politics that informed his lens. “A camera is more powerful than an AK47,” he <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/trending/veteran-lensman-mike-mzileni-says-cameras-are-more-powerful-than-guns-at-new-exhibition-launch-20211213">admonished</a>; be responsible in how you employ it. </p>
<h2>The music photos</h2>
<p>For jazz fans, it is Mzileni’s images of music-making and musicians, collected in two books, <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/A_Common_Hunger_to_Sing.html?id=PisMAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">A Common Hunger to Sing</a> (the source of that Mgcina image) and <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/All_that_Jazz.html?id=qOIBuAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">All That Jazz</a>, which bring home most powerfully the skill and insight we have lost. Alongside his vibrant performance images, Mzileni’s jazz portraits in particular established a standard and an approach that inspired and influenced younger counterparts such as <a href="https://www.instagram.com/siphiwemhlambi/?hl=en">Siphiwe Mhlambi</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467417/original/file-20220607-20-et4u88.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with a woman singing passionately into a microphone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467417/original/file-20220607-20-et4u88.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467417/original/file-20220607-20-et4u88.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467417/original/file-20220607-20-et4u88.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467417/original/file-20220607-20-et4u88.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467417/original/file-20220607-20-et4u88.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467417/original/file-20220607-20-et4u88.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467417/original/file-20220607-20-et4u88.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kwela Books</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Philosopher Susan Sontag <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312420093/onphotography">asserted</a>, “The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.” In other words, the truth of a photographic subject is there already; the photographer’s art is finding it and expressing it as an image so viewers can find it too. Photographers make, not simply find and “take” photographs. Their choices about a subject’s setting and pose, and how a shot is framed and lit, can reveal or obscure that subject’s truth, and sometimes even (accidentally or deliberately) convey something else entirely.</p>
<p>The worst of music photography – today’s unskilled point and shoot fan shots, which editors too often use instead of employing specialist, skilled photographers – doesn’t tell us much except what an artist was wearing, how wide their mouth gaped behind a mic or how dazzling the stage lights were.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rVPCIgLWowo?wmode=transparent&start=56" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Mzileni interviewed about the 1976 uprising in Soweto.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But that was not Mzileni’s enterprise. The discipline of black and white photography like his takes away the easy dazzle of stage lights and sequined costumes that a full-colour image can ride on. It makes intelligent choices about framing and lighting even more crucial. </p>
<h2>Women of jazz</h2>
<p>We see clearly how powerful those choices can be in the portraits of female artists Mzileni created for A Common Hunger to Sing.</p>
<p>There’s a democracy between the artist in front of the camera and the one behind it in how Mzileni presents these women. Some have chosen to wear African finery (<a href="https://www.discogs.com/artist/320023-Mara-Louw">Mara Louw</a>). Some, such as veteran <a href="https://samap.ukzn.ac.za/audio-people/snowy-radebe">Snowy Radebe</a>, sit in their best chair, in their best jacket and neat beret: a respected matriarch of family and church. Others, like Mgcina, <a href="https://www.discogs.com/artist/5078719-Lynette-Leeuw">Lynette Leeuw</a>, <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/peki-emelia-%E2%80%9Cnothembi%E2%80%9D-mkhwebane-1953">Nothembi Mkhwebane</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/sathima-bea-benjamin">Sathima Bea Benjamin</a>, present themselves in the context of their music. Mgcina has that piano; Leeuw cradles her saxophone; Mkhwebane proffers her guitar ahead of her; Benjamin fans out some of her albums. Some smile; some look thoughtful, challenging, solemn or sad.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M6uSnIHQRGI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Mzileni discussing the South African photography archive.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And Mzileni’s lens doesn’t treat any of this as incidental to zoom in for the big shiny grin that has become the cliche of photographing female singers. Every fold and print detail of Louw’s attire, for example, matters for that image, because her vocal identity is as a consummate stylist of song. The clearly-lit experience lines on the faces of stage veterans reinforce their authority and stature: the portrait of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dorothy-masuka">Dorothy Masuku</a> is distilled down to the fierce intelligence of her expression, and the working hands that wrote her songs. </p>
<p>Mzileni was fond of chiaroscuro and used it well: light illuminates the joy of those who have told happy tales in Molefe’s interviews; shadow underlines the regrets and frustrations of others. The full-page portrait of each artist does not just complement the full-page interview it sits opposite; it underlines but also enriches each story. The shared authorial credit on the book’s cover is more than justified.</p>
<p>Another master photographer, the Frenchman <a href="https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/henri-cartier-bresson?all/all/all/all/0">Henri Cartier-Bresson</a>, declared: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is an illusion that photographs are made with the camera … they are made with the eye, heart and head.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With Mike Mzileni’s passing, we have lost the eye, heart and head of a titan of South African music portraiture.</p>
<p><em>This article appeared in an <a href="https://sisgwenjazz.wordpress.com">earlier form</a> at the author’s web page.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184493/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
‘A camera is more powerful than an AK47,’ said the veteran photojournalist, who was also famous for his jazz photos.
Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/146719
2020-10-08T14:40:19Z
2020-10-08T14:40:19Z
Glimpses into the history of street photography in South Africa
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361928/original/file-20201006-20-154hapn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail of a photograph by Anne Fischer, Cape Town, c. 1940s. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anne Fischer/Courtesy Iziko Museums of South Africa, Social History Collections/University of Cape Town Library Special Collections</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1937, <a href="https://digitalcollections.lib.uct.ac.za/anne-fischer">Anne Fischer</a>, a young Jewish refugee, fled Nazi persecution and travelled via Palestine, Italy, Greece and <a href="https://www.fourcornersfilm.co.uk/whats-on/another-eye-online-conference">England</a> to South Africa. There she established herself as a photographer. </p>
<p>She set up a portrait studio on Adderley Street in central Cape Town and, by the 1960s, had become the portrait photographer of choice for wealthy families in the city. In addition to documenting celebrations, weddings and the arrival of new babies, Fischer served as the official photographer for several theatre companies. She also produced a large number of images outside of her studio. These were taken in the streets of Cape Town, in Langa township, in the vibrant multi-racial neighbourhood of <a href="https://www.districtsix.co.za">District Six</a>, which the apartheid state declared a “whites-only” area in 1966, forcing 60,000 people from their homes, and on her travels around the country. </p>
<p>Fischer’s image of a photographer at work outdoors in Cape Town in the 1940s is unusual because it captures both the making of a portrait and the social world that swirls around the sitters that studio portraits so often conceal from view. </p>
<h2>A studio on the street</h2>
<p>The painted backdrop shows large windows opening onto a balcony with an ornate railing and the sea beyond. Across the water is a volcano with lava and smoke billowing – possibly a depiction of Mt Vesuvius, which erupted in 1944. Seated before it is a woman holding a small handbag on her lap, her feet perfectly positioned. Her white clothing looks all the more immaculate when it is compared to the soiled fabric of the photographer’s coat. </p>
<p>At her side is a young boy who also seems to be dressed in his Sunday best, but his shorts and socks are misaligned, adding a touching and comical element to the composition, which has an overall cheerful air to it. Part of the beauty of the image is that it does not silence the background noise that accompanied its production. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361910/original/file-20201006-14-1lap0wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man takes a photograph of a woman and her son on the streets of Cape Town. They stand against a painted backdrop of a balcony overlooking the sea, with a volcano erupting in the distance." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361910/original/file-20201006-14-1lap0wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361910/original/file-20201006-14-1lap0wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361910/original/file-20201006-14-1lap0wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361910/original/file-20201006-14-1lap0wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361910/original/file-20201006-14-1lap0wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361910/original/file-20201006-14-1lap0wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361910/original/file-20201006-14-1lap0wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photograph by Anne Fischer, Cape Town, c. 1940s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Iziko Museums of South Africa, Social History Collections and University of Cape Town Library Special Collections</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead the photograph contains the elaborate rigging that holds up the backdrop – the trees, wall and roof of a house that are the ‘real’ background. There are packages and bundles of belongings on the ground, a bicycle, two people passing, and a woman who might be next in line to be photographed. Even the photographer and his huge camera on legs appear within the frame. With his one foot lifted in the air, he looks as if he might be about to begin a dance with the waiting woman, whose body seems to be formed by the camera, her head visible above and her one foot below.</p>
<p>Fischer’s photograph also opens a window into the hidden history of street photography in South Africa. In the catalogue to an <a href="http://www.specialcollections.uct.ac.za/news/other-camera-exhibition">exhibition</a> he curated, <em>The Other Camera</em>, photographer <a href="http://paulweinberg.co.za/about/">Paul Weinberg</a> observes that although many of those who made a living from photography under apartheid did not have the means to set up their own studios and instead plied their trade on the street, their work remains largely unrecognised. He also points out: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Many established Black photographers in South Africa began their careers as street photographers, notably, <a href="https://www.plparchive.com/ernest-cole-main-page/">Ernest Cole</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/santu-mofokeng-master-photographer-who-chased-down-shadows-131065">Santu Mofokeng</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/juda-ngwenya">Juda Ngwenya</a> … and <a href="https://www.swop.org.za/post/2018/09/04/the-complete-worker-william-matlala-photograph-exhibition-launched">William Matlala</a>. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>An emerging history</h2>
<p>Research on the history of street photography is just starting to emerge. Portraits by the iconic street photography studio <a href="http://www.cca.uct.ac.za/news/movie-snaps-exhibition-opening">Movie Snaps</a>, which operated from a pavement on the edge of the Grand Parade in Cape Town, form the basis for a research project, exhibition and short film curated by academic and filmmaker Siona O’Connell in 2015. </p>
<p>Historian Phindi Mnyaka has written about the work of <a href="https://www.everard-read-capetown.co.za/artist/DANIEL%20%27KGOMO%20%27_MOROLONG/biography/">Daniel Morolong</a>, who began his career as a street photographer. He established the Morolex Ideal Studios in 1968 in Mdantsane near East London, a city on the country’s Eastern Cape coast. He <a href="https://digitalcollections.lib.uct.ac.za/daniel-morolong">photographed</a> urban Black people in their homes, at significant events and at leisure, often relaxing on the beaches that would a short time later be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/17/world/south-africa-decides-to-open-all-beaches-to-blacks.html">racially segregated</a>. The building that housed Morolong’s studio was razed in a fire during the 1990 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/31/world/army-coup-in-south-african-homeland.html">coup</a> in the Ciskei, one of the so-called ‘homelands’ set up by the apartheid state. Almost all of Morolong’s equipment and negatives were destroyed.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361912/original/file-20201006-16-g9atu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men walk along a pavement, both dapper in suits, the one looking at the camera questioningly and the other smiling at it broadly." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361912/original/file-20201006-16-g9atu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361912/original/file-20201006-16-g9atu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361912/original/file-20201006-16-g9atu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361912/original/file-20201006-16-g9atu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361912/original/file-20201006-16-g9atu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1236&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361912/original/file-20201006-16-g9atu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1236&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361912/original/file-20201006-16-g9atu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1236&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ahmed Timol and Suliman Sujee, Johannesburg, c. 1960s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy the Ahmed Timol Family Trust</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An incongruous image</h2>
<p>Images taken by street photographers under apartheid can be understood as instances of what academics Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer have termed “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25621435?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">incongruous images</a>”. These photographs “seem to refuse to testify to the alarming context in which they were taken”. </p>
<p>A portrait by a street photographer of anti-apartheid activist <a href="https://theconversation.com/ahmed-timol-the-quest-for-justice-for-people-murdered-in-apartheids-jails-116843">Ahmed Timol</a> walking alongside his friend Suliman Sujee is exemplary in this regard. This photograph shows us something of what it meant to occupy public space as a person categorised by the apartheid state as “Indian”, and therefore as a potential target for state-sanctioned violence. But it does not show us what we expect to see when we look at images of violence. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/reframing-women-in-namibias-early-history-of-photography-144678">Reframing women in Namibia's early history of photography</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Because of this, the photograph instructs us to look more carefully. To consider whether these young men are dressed so immaculately because, in the context in which they find themselves, it is necessary for them to assert their dignity, to dress so sharply that it is an affront to those who think themselves superior in every way. It’s a small yet not so subtle assertion of their worldliness, of their claim to belonging, that exceeds the narrow confines of racist, retrogressive 1960s South Africa. The photograph was made not long before Timol was tortured and murdered by the security police, the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/list-deaths-detention">22nd person</a> to die in detention. </p>
<p>These kinds of photographs are reminders of untold histories that are only now being unearthed, and they cast light not only on how people were seen in the violent glare of apartheid, but also on how they chose to see themselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146719/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kylie Thomas receives funding from the European Commission H2020-EU.1.3.2. Grant agreement ID: 838864</span></em></p>
Two striking images - from the 1940s and the 1960s - help reveal the rich but still emerging history of street photography in the country.
Kylie Thomas, Research fellow, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/144678
2020-09-07T14:49:56Z
2020-09-07T14:49:56Z
Reframing women in Namibia’s early history of photography
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356534/original/file-20200904-24-12pldrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail of an Aneliese Scherz photograph from 1930s Namibia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anneliese Scherz/Basler Afrika Bibliographien Scherz Collection</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Women photographers, and black African women photographers in particular, are largely absent from early histories of the medium. </p>
<p>Even in South Africa, which has attracted more attention than other parts of the continent, few women photographers from the early and mid-1900s appear in the historical record. There are even fewer whose work has been collected and received serious treatment, like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/constance-stuart-larrabee">Constance Stuart Larrabee</a> and <a href="https://digitalcollections.lib.uct.ac.za/anne-fischer">Anne Fisher</a>. </p>
<p>Women photographers in Namibia have languished in even greater obscurity, and scholarship that embraces this neglected history is only just emerging.</p>
<p>My new <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/photography-and-history-in-colonial-southern-africa/">book</a> <em>Photography and History in Colonial Southern Africa: Shades of Empire</em> explores ways to retrieve the histories lodged in these photographs. </p>
<h2>The photos of Anneliese Scherz</h2>
<p>One of my chapters is dedicated to the work of Anneliese Scherz. Her photography in Namibia begins in the late 1930s and reaches into the 1970s. Across central Namibia in 1938, Scherz took photographs of white farmers of German descent, impoverished Afrikaners and black farm workers. </p>
<p>At the time, South African colonial rule in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/namibia">Namibia</a> was firmly established and the politics of racial segregation prevailed. However, on the eve of World War II the region entered a period of political turmoil. Ethnic nationalism and partisanship threatened the unity of settler society. This was exacerbated by explicit sympathy for the fascist cause and colonial revisionism among settlers of German descent. </p>
<p>Scherz’s photography needs to be placed against this backdrop and understood as an attempt to imagine what lay at the heart of white consciousness in Namibia at the time. I argue that her photographs of German farmers and itinerant Afrikaners documented the harshness of white rural life in a way that fostered the viewer’s empathetic response. In contrast, her depictions of black farm labour in fact concealed the precarity and poverty it produced. </p>
<p>In other words, to Scherz, farm workers were not poor because of an exploitative colonial economy. They were poor because deprivation and scarcity were part of what she considered “native life”. </p>
<p>Her images invite us to engage white women photographers so that we can refine our understanding of how whiteness was lodged in the ways they looked at disenfranchised indigenous people. </p>
<p>And where black women’s agency was concealed by photography, it might have to be recovered or reactivated by opening confined spaces and asking about women’s multiple photographic practices, rather than merely focusing on the photographer as author.</p>
<h2>The women photo collectors of Usakos</h2>
<p>My reading expands the frame by juxtaposing the Scherz photos with the practice of black female photographers in Namibia at the time. I look at photos taken in Usakos, a central Namibian town, from 1910 up to the late 1950s when residents were forcibly removed to townships and the location destroyed. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356538/original/file-20200904-18-gxwohm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356538/original/file-20200904-18-gxwohm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356538/original/file-20200904-18-gxwohm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356538/original/file-20200904-18-gxwohm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356538/original/file-20200904-18-gxwohm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356538/original/file-20200904-18-gxwohm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356538/original/file-20200904-18-gxwohm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356538/original/file-20200904-18-gxwohm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Catalogue for an exhibition of the Usakos images.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Basler Afrika Bibliographien</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The photos have been <a href="https://baslerafrika.ch/product/usakos-photographs-beyond-ruins-the-old-location-albums-1920s-1960s/">collected</a>, <a href="https://www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/usakos/">preserved</a> and curated by four women residents of Usakos. The work provides a window on an intricate history of women’s engagements with the medium. </p>
<p>The images tell of an African urban community’s encounters with black photographers who travel from place to place. The photographers came to central Namibia from as far as Cape Town and Johannesburg, moving along the railway lines to offer their services to people who didn’t have access to photo studios. </p>
<p>There are portraits of men and women in elegant attire and snapshots of everyday domestic activities in and around the location. There are weddings, funerals and baptisms, musicians with instruments, and men’s football and women’s netball teams lined up in a row.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356115/original/file-20200902-14-l9ury1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men stand and a woman sits between them on a chair, all in formal attire and looking at the camera unsmilingly." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356115/original/file-20200902-14-l9ury1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356115/original/file-20200902-14-l9ury1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356115/original/file-20200902-14-l9ury1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356115/original/file-20200902-14-l9ury1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356115/original/file-20200902-14-l9ury1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356115/original/file-20200902-14-l9ury1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356115/original/file-20200902-14-l9ury1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Ousakas portrait.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wilhelmine Katjimune Collection</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Historical photographs can teach us about women’s negotiation of colonialism, apartheid and forced removals. And how the Usakos collectors understand their collections as a means to remember the past, negotiate the present and imagine their futures. </p>
<h2>A question of representation</h2>
<p>There is a long history of the exposure of women’s bodies in the colonial record, as well as of the production of images of racialised and sexualised women. The record raises questions about the politics and ethics of representation in today’s knowledge production. </p>
<p>Critical examinations of the colonial photographic archive, and the knowledge regimes it engendered, have been met by a desire to acknowledge women’s agency as photographic subjects. The last decade has seen the growth of historical <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Ambivalent">studies</a> of photography produced by <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Women-and-Photography-in-Africa-Creative-Practices-and-Feminist-Challenges/Newbury-Rizzo-Thomas/p/book/9781350136564">scholars</a> based in Africa. There are wide-ranging public contestations of dominant narratives.</p>
<p>One of the key concerns in both academic and public history contexts has been to address the tension between the heightened visibility of African women in the photographic record and their concurrent silencing in historical writing. </p>
<p>This tension possibly explains why numerous women academics, artists and activists continue to turn to the archive with the aim of dismantling an aesthetic order – one that notoriously put the black female body on display and fixed colonised Africans within gendered, racial and tribal categories.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356536/original/file-20200904-24-4zqiw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356536/original/file-20200904-24-4zqiw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356536/original/file-20200904-24-4zqiw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356536/original/file-20200904-24-4zqiw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356536/original/file-20200904-24-4zqiw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356536/original/file-20200904-24-4zqiw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1147&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356536/original/file-20200904-24-4zqiw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1147&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356536/original/file-20200904-24-4zqiw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1147&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wits University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This work is important, but we also need to keep in mind that there is a world of images beyond the archive. The Usakos old location photographs are an indication of how much this world of images was shaped by women.</p>
<p><em>This article is based on a chapter from the new book <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/photography-and-history-in-colonial-southern-africa/">Photography and History in Colonial Southern Africa</a> published by <a href="http://witspress.co.za">Wits University Press</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144678/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lorena Rizzo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Images of white Namibian farmers and their workers and a collection of portraits by travelling black photographers form part of the early archive.
Lorena Rizzo, Senior lecturer, University of Basel
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/145390
2020-09-01T14:02:25Z
2020-09-01T14:02:25Z
Jürgen Schadeberg: chronicler of life across apartheid’s divides
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355782/original/file-20200901-16-4fcxp9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jürgen Schadeberg in 1955 with trainee photographers at Drum, Peter Magubane, left, and Bob Gosani. Both became well-known photographers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jürgen Schadeberg</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I read about <a href="https://www.jurgenschadeberg.com">Jürgen Schadeberg</a>’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/arts/jurgen-schadeberg-dead.html">death</a> while listening to Abdullah Ibrahim’s song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77tTAjFrxJM"><em>Threshold</em></a> and thought about how, in the last two years, so many of the great photographers whose work helped us to see not only apartheid’s divides, but also beyond them, have crossed the threshold from life to death. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/david-goldblatt-photographer-who-found-the-human-in-an-inhuman-social-landscape-98984">David Goldblatt</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/capturing-the-soweto-uprising-south-africas-most-iconic-photograph-lives-on-98318">Sam Nzima</a> died in 2018; <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cloete-breytenbach">Cloete Breytenbach</a>, <a href="https://www.traceyderrick.co.za">Tracey Derrick</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/herbert-mabuza">Herbert Mabuza</a> in 2019; <a href="https://theconversation.com/santu-mofokeng-master-photographer-who-chased-down-shadows-131065">Santu Mofokeng</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/john-liebenberg-masterful-photographer-of-life-and-war-in-southern-africa-132772">John Liebenberg</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/george-hallett">George Hallett</a> and Schadeberg in 2020. Collectively, their work provides us with a critical mirror with which to interrogate the catastrophe that was <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a>, and the long struggle to bring about its end. </p>
<p>And their photographs also make it possible to see the magic in this place, and to marvel at how hope and beauty persist in South Africa, even in the darkest of times. As historian John Edwin Mason <a href="https://johnedwinmason.typepad.com/john_edwin_mason_photogra/2014/04/j%C3%BCrgen-schadeberg.html">writes</a> of the group of photographers that Schadeberg mentored at the iconic <a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668"><em>Drum</em></a> magazine – a team that included <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ernest-cole">Ernest Cole</a>, <a href="http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/NAM/sophia/writers/gosani/gosaniS.htm">Bob Gosani</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/alfred-khumalo">Alf Kumalo</a> and <a href="https://www.newframe.com/peter-magubane-a-photographer-against-apartheid/">Peter Magubane</a> – “It’s impossible to imagine South African photography without them.” The International Center for Photography awarded the <a href="https://www.icp.org/infinity-awards/j%C3%BCrgen-schadeberg">Cornell Capa</a> Lifetime Achievement Award to Schadeberg in 2014 for his career, which spanned over six decades.</p>
<h2>Striking images</h2>
<p>I cannot look at Schadeberg’s startling photograph of Hans Prignitz performing a handstand with just one hand, precariously balanced on a rain-slicked ledge high above the city of Hamburg, half obliterated by mist, without a shiver going through me. It was taken three years after the end of the Second World War and two years before Schadeberg left Germany for South Africa, where the photographer was to play a key role in documenting the first two decades of apartheid.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a suit doing a one-armed handstand on a rain-wet balcony railing high above a city, his legs curling over towards the city." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hans Prignitz’s handstand on the St Michaelis Church, Hamburg, 1948.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jürgen Schadeberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Schadeberg’s photograph of Constance Molefe, bounding over a tennis net, racket suspended in mid-air, gives me a corresponding shudder. This time not only because she appears so close to catching her foot in the net and falling painfully to the ground, but because of the knowledge that her hopes for a career as a professional athlete will soon be dashed. <a href="http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/leg19550706028020069">The Group Areas Development Act</a> was made law in 1955, the same year the photograph was taken, and the ruinous <a href="https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/leg19531009028020047">Bantu Education Act</a> had been passed two years before.</p>
<p>The caption that accompanied the image of the tennis player in the June 1955 issue of <em>Drum</em> reads as follows:</p>
<p>“Transvaal’s little Mo – Constance Molefe, junior tennis star, who aims to take the senior title. Few African women ever reach the tennis limelight, even if they do, it’s usually at a late age. But there is today a steady flow of girl learners, under expert guidance, and we can expect a tennis boom for our ladies in the near future. Topping Transvaal’s junior is pretty Constance Molefe, a 16 year old primary schooler from Orlando. She’s fresh and young, energetic, a glutton for hard court practice, and shows remarkable ability for a girl of her age.”</p>
<p>Constance Molefe’s joyful leap towards the freedom that lay outside the ever-tightening restrictions of the apartheid state was not to be realised for 40 years. In Schadeberg’s image, she is fixed in flight, reaching for the future. The image can be seen <a href="https://www.baha.co.za/item-detail/?q=42_846">here</a> in the Bailey’s African History Archive.</p>
<p>Schadeberg took what he considered his <a href="https://flashbak.com/the-world-as-he-sees-it-an-exclusive-interview-with-legendary-photographer-jurgen-schadeberg-430449/">first “real” photograph</a> in an air raid shelter in Berlin in 1941, at the tender age of 10, and went on to produce iconic images of many of the most important individuals and events in South African history. </p>
<p>He is sometimes, incorrectly and in a manner that is somewhat patronising towards the photographers he worked alongside, referred to as “the father of South African photography”. </p>
<p>In truth, he was not much older than the photographers he trained and who, in turn, inducted him into South African life. Schadeberg was just 20 when he took up the position of chief photographer and photo editor at the newly established <em>Drum</em>. He was also one among many photographers who left Europe as a result of the war. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668">Journalism of Drum's heyday remains cause for celebration - 70 years later</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Many of those who arrived in South Africa before him, during the 1930s and early 1940s, were Jewish refugees who had no choice but to flee. They, like Schadeberg, brought along new techniques and ways of seeing that coincided with the advent of popular “picture magazines”, like <em>Life</em>, <em>Look and Picture Post</em> in the US and the UK, and <em>Drum</em> and <em><a href="https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/4208130">Zonk! African People’s Pictorial</a></em> in South Africa, which published photo-essays and provided photographers with regular work.</p>
<h2>The Drum years</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A smartly dressed male and female couple dance, hands and feet in the air, the male dancer mid-air, with their shadows against a white wall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dancing at the Ritz, Johannesburg, 1952.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jürgen Schadeberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As curator and documentarian Candice Jansen has <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-10-27-00-casting-history-to-his-own-drum-beat/">noted</a>, <em>Drum</em> was just as central to the making of Schadeberg as a photojournalist as he was to the making of South African visual history. The magazine’s photographers captured images of famous and not-yet-famous people, immortalised life in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/sophiatown">Sophiatown</a> and resistance to forced removals, and recorded the new forms of popular culture – fashion, jazz and dancing – that defined what has come to be known as the <a href="https://books.google.nl/books/about/The_Drum_Decade.html?id=XfdZAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">“<em>Drum</em> decade”</a>. </p>
<p>Schadeberg worked alongside Magubane and documented the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/defiance-campaign-1952">Defiance Campaign</a> and the famous <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/1956-womens-march-pretoria-9-august">Women’s March</a> to protest against being forced to carry passes in 1956. They were both arrested (Schadeberg once and Magubane four times) for taking photographs of the <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/what-happened-at-the-treason-trial-africa-media-online/PwJS8md1REM3Iw?hl=en">Treason Trial</a>, which took place between 1956 and 1961.</p>
<p>Schadeberg and Magubane were among the photographers who documented the aftermath of the <a href="https://humanrights.ca/story/the-sharpeville-massacre">Sharpeville Massacre </a> on 21 March 1960, when police opened fire on a gathering of approximately 7,000 unarmed people who were protesting against pass laws. In just two minutes, the police shot 13,000 bullets into the crowd and 69 people were killed, most shot in the back as they were running away, and more than 300 wounded.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Aerial view of five trucks carrying rows of coffins in the centre of a field. Mourners and clergy stand at a distance on either side, alongside dozens of graves, some still empty." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sharpeville Funeral, 1960.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jürgen Schadeberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Schadeberg chartered a plane to photograph the mass funeral and took a chilling image of hundreds of mourners watching as flatbed trucks carried the coffins of those who were murdered across a field in the Phelindaba cemetery at Sharpeville. In the foreground of the image is a row of priests standing before the dark, symmetrical, empty graves. The photographer donated this <a href="https://ccac.concourttrust.org.za/works/jurgen-schadeburg-sharpeville-funeral-1960">photograph</a> to the art collection of the South African Constitutional Court.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man with greying hair leans his arm against a window sill as he gazes out through bars on the window." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nelson Mandela in his cell, 1994.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jürgen Schadeberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Schadeberg is justifiably best known for his portraits of Nelson Mandela, and of jazz greats like Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela, but his oeuvre includes many images of everyday people whose stories would otherwise have gone untold. </p>
<p>The gift of the work that he created alongside his compatriots lies in their depiction of the social worlds that apartheid sought to destroy, but that live on through their photographs. <em>Hamba kahle</em> (go well), Jürgen Schadeberg, 1931-2020.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145390/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kylie Thomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The gift of his images lies in their depiction of the social worlds that apartheid sought to destroy, but that live on through the photographs.
Kylie Thomas, Research fellow, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/131065
2020-02-04T09:45:42Z
2020-02-04T09:45:42Z
Santu Mofokeng: master photographer who chased down shadows
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313308/original/file-20200203-41485-1uneryc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Buddhist Retreat, near Ixopo (2003)</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Santu Mofokeng/Santu Mofokeng Foundation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On hearing of the death of the celebrated South African photographer <a href="https://www.contemporaryand.com/exhibition/santu-mofokeng-a-metaphorical-biography/">Santu Mofokeng</a> it felt like a great shadow passing over us, the final withdrawal of one who illuminates. </p>
<p>Final, because the man from Soweto who documented the inner and outer landscapes of black life during and after apartheid, had lived like a shadow himself for years as a result of a harrowing <a href="https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/progressive-supranuclear-palsy/">degenerative disease</a>, resulting in the loss of speech and most physical capacity, certainly unable to take any more photographs. </p>
<p>Some might take consolation in the thought that shadows were his thing, that he tracked the great frailty of humanity which is the predilection for <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Chasing_Shadows.html?id=t_YgKQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">chasing shadows</a>. </p>
<p>And yet the great, transfiguring beauty of many of his photographs – from the <a href="https://aperture.org/blog/santu-mofokengs-sean-otoole/">caves at Motouleng (2004 - 2007)</a>, or the pale headless horse at the Buddhist retreat (2003), or the ghostly <a href="https://themediaonline.co.za/2020/01/the-billboard-is-a-fact-and-feature-of-township-landscape-rip-santu-mofokeng/">winter scene in Tembisa</a> (1991) – can still hit you like stray bullets. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313253/original/file-20200203-41481-1w7jne5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Santu Mofokeng with the Johannesburg skyline behind him at the peak of his internationally celebrated career.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">©️ Steve Tanchel</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The photographer as thinker</h2>
<p>Santu was not just a photographer, he was a thinker in big themes, sculpting allegories, insights and concepts in relation to his images as he did so. As he put it, the rubric was large. Some might call his statements aphorisms, but the idea of a truth contained in a pithy statement was not really part of his vocabulary. </p>
<p>We quoted Santu recently in a book appropriately called <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Ambivalent">Ambivalent: Photography and Visibility in African History</a>, and also in a small teaching video made from audio clips, as he talks about the ambivalence that always informed his work. As he puts it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am interested in the ambiguity of things. This comes not from a position of power, but of helplessness. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He found that famous South African photographer <a href="https://theconversation.com/david-goldblatt-photographer-who-found-the-human-in-an-inhuman-social-landscape-98984">David Goldblatt’s</a> interest in the existence of things, their ‘is-ness’ as Goldblatt put it, crystallised his own position: “I’m not like that.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313262/original/file-20200203-41485-1wkbp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Winter in Tembisa (1991)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Santu Mofokeng/Santu Mofokeng Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both these two great photographers stated they were not interested in photographing <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25621437?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">violence</a>. Santu’s reason? It was unnecessary, because “the violence is in the knowing”. Santu himself was in his final year at <a href="https://www.morrisisaacsonhigh.co.za/our-history/">Morris Isaacson High School in 1976</a>, the school most closely associated with the start of the Soweto uprising. </p>
<p>At the memorial service held after his death at the school on 30 January 2020, I learned that he never talked about what happened at that time. Violence of so many kinds already pressed so firmly down on many South Africans, that it was the zones of miasma in people’s minds and around them that interested him as a photographer, as well as their flickering moments of transcendence. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313267/original/file-20200203-41485-1ah9p0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Church of God, Motouleng Cave, Clarens (1996)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Santu Mofokeng/Santu Mofokeng Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Poisoned landscapes</h2>
<p>Santu’s later work on climate change certainly took on these things: the human state of mind, and the state of the earth. As he moved into his big theme of <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2020-01-31-taking-the-battle-to-the-grave-south-africas-contested-sites/">poisoned landscapes</a>, he shifted from what he termed people’s “psychic rupture with the land” to the land’s own rupturing with itself. </p>
<p>His photographs pick up on the sediment discharged by histories of mining and abandoned industrial progress, such as acid mine drainage. He draws out the seeping signs of processes happening in and on the earth, often coming from underground, metabolising as toxic, cancerous, or appearing as slow encrustations and eroded rifts. </p>
<p>Much of this work is portentous, ominous, pointing towards the unknown at the threshold of elements, be it water, earth, air or fire. But some photographs present the landscape as completely unfixed, where centrifugal forces have turned things completely upside down. In the photographs of the replacement of sand on Durban’s South Beach (2007), the flying gobs look like some planetary constellation or biblical plague and the ground is framed as flying in bits through the sky. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313257/original/file-20200203-41554-5ezcc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Replacing of sand washed away during the floods and wave action, South Beach, Durban (2007)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Santu Mofokeng/Santu Mofokeng Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As for people’s state of mind around climate change, Santu used to ask the question: how do you photograph anxiety? In fact, “It’s always been about not knowing.” While some continents burn and others continue to unfreeze, we should remember that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Pictures lay the ground as to what are the issues. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>No South African photographer leaves a more substantial legacy for the country to think with as it encounters the ever more rapidly unfolding dilemmas and catastrophes of climate change. </p>
<p>But Santu never took it for granted that his photographs would be read with the subtlety of his own thought as he contemplated what he had seen. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You make the pictures, you know how they’re going to be played out … It’s not as if I’m neutral, but I don’t allow - I don’t want - people to make me think the way they do.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Santu was unseizable. A great shadow, and he has passed. The photographs he made and the things he said should make us go on thinking. We are not done because he is not done. His work remains. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313265/original/file-20200203-41507-1tbgjue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Telegraph poles standing askew near Brandvlei, Northern Cape (2007)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Santu Mofokeng/Santu Mofokeng Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131065/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patricia Hayes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
No South African photographer leaves a more substantial legacy than Santu Mofokeng. He was adept at mapping interior worlds through haunting images of black life and, above all, his landscapes.
Patricia Hayes, DSI/NRF SARChI Chair in Visual History & Theory, University of the Western Cape
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.