matter no matter

This is my house.

2011-06-13T00:54:00.000-07:00

On Thursday last I met Paul Tesha from Dar Es Salaam. He is a quiet-spoken, polite guy who is an economic refugee from Tanzania. He was first in SA in 2006, but was deported back to his domicile on being caught. He returned in 2010.

He makes up part of a band of Tanzanians who live under a bridge in Cape Town. Last week all the men were forcibly removed but they have begun to trickle back into their previous place of residence.

So it is under these rarified and intense conditions that I engage with Paul.

'Please show me where you live, Paul' I ask.

He leads me to this portion of tar and says, 'This is my house.'

www.din1.com

2011-05-16T06:22:00.000-07:00

I made a website for all people because, in the words of the inimitable DJ Koze, 'all people is my friends'. Lightning strikes the Pot of Gold.

IDA

2011-05-15T23:37:00.000-07:00

When I lived in Berlin I became friendly with Ida who studied at the same university. At the end of an evening of excited chit-chat, suggestive glances and witheld information at Club Duncker she invited me back to her apartment. I declined on account of a reason which, as it left my lips, seemed utterly ridiculous. A major fuck-up.

The following night I changed my mind(surprise surprise) and called Ida to take her up on her offer of the same morning. She said that the sell-by date of the offer had passed.

A few days later she came to my apartment and I gave her a glass of water for refreshment. I also made this portrait.

The body of water represents the crux of my relationship with Ida and will always remain suspended between the possibility of sex and a late-night, half-can of refrigerated tuna fisch.

N1 - Sean O'Toole

2011-05-03T03:39:00.001-07:00

"He watched a faint halo of dust form over the abraded landscape. It was accompanied by the distant sound of motorised noise. Standing on the verge, he wasn’t sure which he had noticed first, the dust or the noise."

Sean O'Toole supplied the captions which appear in the N1 Book. Here is a description from the author directed at his own words:

“If the highway is the theoretical expression of a straight line, reality proposes something else.” This statement, which, in lieu of a notebook, I sent as a text message to myself one morning while stuck in a traffic snarl north of Johannesburg, kick-started a curious process of investigation. This process culminated in the series of texts that accompany David Southwood’s photo essay on the N1.

About these words. Some of the texts appearing in this book-length essay are drawn directly from those early SMS conversations with myself, a loose, purposeless series of dialogues prompted by the direct, first-hand experience driving along the motorways in and around Gauteng, principally the route between Johannesburg and Pretoria. Not all the texts were birthed this way. The great majority are the outcome of a more deliberate and focused engagement with the photographer’s pictures. One key point: the texts do not caption the photographs; conversely, the photographs do not illustrate their text companions. The two live independently. In book form, they collaborate. Sometimes the partnership is harmonious, although purposeful dissonance is also a part of the book’s creative strategy. At times boldly factual, in other instances shyly impressionistic, the texts are not the principle actor: the book can be enjoyed without reference to the words – arguably, the converse is not true.

Ranging in style from narrative vignettes to aphoristic enquiry, the texts aim to underscore the point that there is no straightforward way of understanding the road, this road, our National Road One. The N1 exists as a mute fact; it is a functional transport route. The N1 is, however, also a public stage, a quixotic metaphor waiting to be understood.

Sean O’Toole

Wave

2011-05-03T03:15:00.000-07:00

Here is a shot of three waves breaking against one another and throwing up a peak.

Over the course of the last few years I have seen two other photographs of these waves comprised of two or more other waves moving is dissimilar directions.

I also made a photograph like this many years ago. To me they represent ideas which are present in the artistic consciousness, but which don't get realised. If I even finish the series it will be a comment on these sorts of conceptual tracks and the eventual apprehension thereof.

Adam, init?

2011-03-29T12:52:00.001-07:00

My new project has to do with a natural amphitheatre which is formed by the confluence of some highways, at the start/terminus of the N1(highway), and the 40-50 men who live there. A band of Tanzanians(mainly) have set up house in the underpass. These men are waiting to stow away and there are forays by night into the dim flouros of the harbour near the pig iron heap in order to jump onto a ship. They are the hardest group of men I have ever encountered(they would never agree to play Aussie Rules) and they occupy a large and very inhospitable departure lounge.

Their domicile is adjacent to the harbour's high wall. Maybe a new ubiquitous and fragmented country should be created which can act as the domicile of men who occupy underpasses, barren shoulders and other other sooty and underdesigned bits of angular town planning. How about Accrete?

Every day the group power structure changes because the community is transient, but I think the main cat is called Kebo. He has a jaw like and anvil and loves telling me to fuck off in Swahili. Some of these men have come because their farms no longer have rain because the climate has changed. It's hard for me to comprehend.

When on the turf of the Tanzanians one feels odd: it's as if one is surrounded by sheets of one way glass whose polarity switches constantly. Sometimes one feels invasive because it's possible to observe very personal belongings, like a tiny kids hat containing a stone where the small cranium should be in order to prevent it from blowing away after it has been washed. At other times one become aware of the spectators in the millions of cars which stream around on the highways which hem the zome in.

This is Adam Bichili. He left Somalia for Kenya when he was 7 because of civil war and came to SA when he was in his late teens. Somehow he ended up in Birmingham and then was deported for fighting with a fellow human after 7 years in that city. He seems to have been in jail at all the points where he has lived. In Johannesburg he was in Sun City. Jail is fuck all he says. I don't think it is harrowing for him.

He is very unusual in that he didn't ask for anything, had a certain resigned humour to do with his predicament and was a sharp as a knife. He doesn't really mind if he dies, he said so. That's it. Maybe he has a certain sort of liberation.

He has a girl and a kid called Ayiya in Birmingham. He misses them a load. I asked him what the worst thing in his life was.

'Winter, init?'

Architecture of Consequence. Netherlands Institute of Architects

2011-03-23T02:07:00.000-07:00

A film that I made for Noero Wollf Architects for the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2010 will be shown at the Netherlands Institute of Architects.

The film starts by describing the harsh urban fabric around Inkwenkwezi School and charting the morphology of its urban context. The signage which adorns the school's main facade is derived from the pop signage which the citizens in the informal settlement around the school use to advertise various services and ideas. A documentation of this popular form and quotidian township life gradually give on to views of the school, which emerges in an appropriate fashion.

The body of the film is held together by the promenade which leads around the enclosed public section of the school grounds, and the promenade feature is held by footage of two different fraternities using the school hall: Christian Adventists and the school body.

Our narrator is the head of the school, Mr Kutu.

The sound is almost more important than the film footage and comes from 3 sources. Live sound from the Canon Camera's shit onboard mic, sound gained from an external Sennheiser Mic and sound from an external stereo EDIROL sound recorder.

Gang Razor

2011-02-28T02:56:00.001-08:00

See here for the work I did surrounding this nasty little fellow.

Bridge People

2011-02-28T02:07:00.000-08:00

I have decided to photograph the bridge dwellers of the CBD. I always want to speak to the small shadows who I see while driving my car past the various underpasses of Cape Town. And now I do.

As I suspected they are mostly criminals and people who have migrated here from other African Countries. They live in sooty, dirty surroundings and are transient as a result of the city's irregular clean up policies. At some point I suspect it will become clear to me that they are chancers of note. In some way I will have to resist their urge to throw the dice at my feet.

My favourite shot so far is of a man called Christopher who has been through the gaol system. He is the kingpin of a small community who live under an extension to an exisiting structure.

He sits with his hands on his knees.

Samson is the main wearing the chain and he lives with 12 other men from Tanzania.

The woman with the shaved head is 'Sintel' - Chantelle. She aint got no teeth. Her boyfriend is Lunga(Union Jack) from the Eastern Cape. He rules his roost and shaves her head with a bare Wilkinson Sword razor blade exactly like the one I photographed in Pollsmoor(colour shot above). This wrapped blade is what gang members use to climb bluntly through the echelons.

DG

2011-02-24T12:53:00.001-08:00

I met with David Goldblatt this morning and persuaded him to stand before some bright lights and a cumbersome camera.

Feeling a bit bad about lining him up in front of such an intimidating Everest of gear I said, 'Do you feel comfortable?'

'As comfortable as it's possible for me to feel given the circumstances.' He replied.

The film was processed in my bath and scanned on my scanner.

The experience was short-lived, but will remain with me for longer than 1/50 s at F16.5.

Mbabane

2011-02-11T22:25:00.000-08:00

There are a couple of photographs which I have made over my career which I think are better than others. This is one of them.

. I am the moderator. I can say these things.

Step-up station

2011-02-11T22:04:00.001-08:00

When I was in my home town at Christmas time I photographed this small step-up station which was adjacent to a much larger building bult in the same brutal functional style.

For some reason I am attracted to these spartan, planar, form-follows-function structures. I often find subtle tonal variation much more satisfying that graphic, compositional trickery. They also lend themselves to a mode of photography which privileges the technical over the formal which, when one is obsessed with clarity, makes for fun.

Unfortunately these buildings also privileged a small set of white people's operations over a larger underprivileged population. See the building's relationship with the street. Not personable is it? Despite the fact that this is the back of the building I am sure the architects could have negotiated this threshold in a more friendly manner.

These photos have not been retouched.

Books

2011-02-09T00:43:00.001-08:00

I taught some kids at the AAA school of Advertising yesterday and the topic was photographer's book, or 'photobooks' as the the genus seems to have been renamed. I crated some corkers of my own to illustrate some opinions and I think I made an impression not least because I swore occasionally.

During the course of the talk I deduced that it's vital to have a printed dummy asap because the hard copy is obviously way more explicit in terms of fuctionality in the hand than a fancy InDesign document.

Gerry Badger, the dude who wrote the text for the aforementioned book, claims that originally there was no emphasis on photo exhibitions so books were the collective animal for photos and they were lodged in archives and museums. He says that this history of photos should be distinguished from established 'formalist' and 'technical' and appreciations of the medium's history.

Here is a good blog which reviews photobooks.

I particularly like the look of the book called 'nerves'.

TJ/Double Negative

2011-02-02T23:01:00.000-08:00

I purchased the expensive collaborative set of photobook and novel which was put out by David Goldblatt and Ivan Vladislavic last year.

In order to charge R1000 for a box set I think that there should be an explicit limitation on the first edition. There are some other gripes which I have with the set, but these are eclipsed by the content which would sell for way more than R1000 if artistic production was valued properly.

The novel, Double Negative, tells the story of a young man who flunks out of 'varsity and meets Saul Auerbach, a photographer, on the recommendation of his, the narrator's, dad. The meeting doesn't seem to have a great impact on the difficult young man, but when, in a later chapter, he returns from a stint in London we realise that he is a photographer.

Neville, the narrator, works for magazines and then is gradually taken up by the artworld.

The novel unwittingly describes parts of my life with unnerving accuracy. Granted I am probably superimposing the negative of my life onto the novel's framework, but it's still true that there is an uncanny congruence.

Third wave

2011-01-21T21:52:00.000-08:00

I have stumbled upon two comments about authenticity and photography lately. Here they are.

I like the comment of the anonymous responder to the weak article entitled 'deja vu'.

Seeing the lids of a box with transparent lids

2011-01-19T06:18:00.000-08:00

It's from this hotch potch of crap that I bought a very useful grey plastic toolbox/tackle box with two transparent lids.

When I scanned the neg and printed a small test I became convinced that I saw the lids, in ink on the paper print. It wasn't on the table because I had purchased the box prior to this photo being made as a gesture of goodwill towards the static little community who waited patiently for passing guttersnipes.

It's the same sort of quandry which Ivan Vladislavic addresses in my Milnerton Market book when he quotes Andre' Breton:

'André Breton, considering De Chirico’s fascination with certain objects (artichoke, glove, cookie, spool), writes, somewhat cryptically, ‘As far as I am concerned, a mind’s arrangement with regard to certain objects is even more important than its regard for certain arrangements of objects, these two kinds of arrangement controlling between them all forms of sensibility.’ The patterning of objects rests not only with the things themselves but with the disposition of the mind of the observer.

Denzel Willemse wanted what I have

2011-01-13T12:39:00.001-08:00

On the dug-up, frayed edges of a wilting, forgotten town called Wepener I encountered this gentleman. He was driving in circles of ever decreasing size around my car whose boot was open to reveal mountains of road trip paraphernalia and over-designed German camera equipment. Finally Denzel and his mate stop suddenly and his friend says, 'Do you have drink?' 'No, I just have water' 'Give it to me'.

The driver snatches the bottle, downs my water(the weather is scorching) and tosses the large 2l bottle onto the dug-up, frayed, forgotten edge road of Wepener.

I ask DW if I can make a photograph of him and he says yes, but before he steps out of the car he makes a quick call. I set up the camera and as if by magic a second shoddy taxi appears carrying two equally dodgy men in the front with Okapis on then brain.

'Are you travelling alone?' asks DW. 'No, I have my dog Cressida.' I whistle loudly and Cressida come sprinting down the dug-up, frayed, forgotten edge road of Wepener.

'Have this nectarine before you go'

Raptor and locust

2011-01-13T12:19:00.000-08:00

I found this raptor sleeping quietly in its own down near the Gariep Dam. Strangely the corpus lies near the feathers and if a car caused the damage then it makes no sense. The body would have been flung far from the impact zone. Ed R's 'Royal Road Test' springs to mind. I have always admired this guy's errant genius and incontrovertible taste in roofless cars.

My expert friends from the department of birds tell me it's a Pale Chanting Goshawk which sounds non sensical, pale not being a logical qualifier for a chant. But the name is beautiful. I thought it was a Gabar Goshawk. Either way it's immature. I mean what nut would try and eat a locust off the tar when I car was coming, or...not?

Find a crop attached. The lighting is subtle and a fly can be noted on the fluffy bum of the bird - wings and two big eyes.

Review of Alistair Whitton for ARTSA

2010-11-30T21:06:00.001-08:00

Herewith:

Roger Ballen

2010-11-29T20:49:00.000-08:00

I went to the launch of a series of Roger Ballen photographs from a series called 'Shadow Chamber'.

After the launch there was a talk by Roger Ballen who is possibly the biggest fucking idiot on the planet. He talked in kid's terms about his photographs taken in a boarding house and not once mentioned the ethical questions which the photography raises.

I can be for a simple photo/cash exchange when the photographer acknowledges that and takes some sort of ethical responsibility for it, and the subject is made aware of the possible implications of the photography.

Not Ballen who acts dumb.

Here is the opening remark on Roger Ballen's www.

The art of Roger Ballen is impossible to forget. It goes deep. Gets at places we didn’t know were there. Maybe hoped weren't there. It makes us wild. It opens us up to those uncertain, shocking and frighteningly banal aspects of the waking dream, twitching between animal and human, the clean and the unclean, the animate and the inanimate, the lived and the imagined, the natural and the performed. So despite the fact that his early and mid-period works – stretching, say, from the late 1970s through to the 1990s - were made under the guise of the photo-documentary tradition, there was always something else going on, something much sharper, much hotter. Arguably, the dynamic is this: Ballen’s complex artistic vision transforms particular historical and social issues into private, felt, internally experienced matters.

Later in the week I photographed my bed and discovered that the film, which was a gift, was heavily soiled with Fungus.

A review I wrote of a Goldblatt show at the Michael Stevenson.

2010-10-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.artsouthafrica.com/?article=433

When David Goldblatt published In Boksburg in 1982, no one knew what the hell he was doing. In the face of rampant apartheid he withdrew to a quiet suburb and made black and white photographs, which declaimed very little. The straightness of the Boksburg arrow, in retrospect, is dangerously clear. Therefore it is with trepidation that I pick some holes in his latest show whose inevitable programme is also to let loose some predictive arrows into South Africa's middle distance.

The show is split into four sections, circulating clockwise from the entrance of the gallery, and titled Municipal Officials, In the time of Aids, Landscapes and Memorials. Because this review is too brief to evaluate four disparate sections, I have grouped the last three, which are distinct from the first.

To the left of Elize Klaaste, a municipal official in Loeriesfontein with a tidying disability, is a dilapidated bar heater. On the heater, in spider koki, is scribbled the warning, "Gevaar Buite Werking". On Elize's left, mounted on the wall behind her shoulder-pad, is a framed tourist advertisement featuring two non-descript scenes each containing a mesa. The caption reads: "The Northwest, come and see for yourself".

The clarity of Goldblatt's vision is more apparent in Municipal Officials than in the rest of the gallery, his argument more sustained. He has photographed municipal officials in situ. It is astonishing to see the ease with which technical mastery, the addressing of taboo areas of transitional dysfunction (in a nuanced and unbiased way), and the trials of trying to keep an office tidy collapse into each other.

Klaaste's faulty heater and the atypical tourist photographs hint at two problems the exhibition addresses: the failure of systems and how difficult it is to photograph the semi-desert successfully. All the work is sewn together by a foreboding sense of impending or existent failure, but in order to posit an argument which is based predominantly on photographs whose meaning is designed not to be ostensible, there needs to be a strictness of vision and the cumulative force of quantity. These only exist in Municipal Officials, which is both humorous and careful.

The ensuing three sections are comprised mainly of landscapes, all of them indexed by traces of man. They are barren and filled with apocalyptic ennui. In the time of Aids depicts landscapes, each containing an Aids ribbon of sorts. There are very few people in these landscapes; it is as if everyone has died. Memorials are pictures of small, roadside memorials, and Landscapes is chiefly a mix of photos made at intersections of longitude and latitude and semi-desert vistas, sometimes containing person or two.

In these three sections, with a few notable exceptions (such as In commemoration of and protest against farm murders, Rietvlei on the N1, near Polokwane, Limpopo. 19 June 2004), Goldblatt has often photographed ideas rather than pictures, finding scenes that are illustrative rather than sublime. The gritty printing technique, a slightly raised perspective and the fact that just about everything has been photographed at high sun lend to some very ordinary scenes a photographic value that is not innate to them. While this might be the point I miss, I think it is those scenes bolstered, not saved, by technique that succeed best.

Being au fait with Goldblatt's work means that I can place this show on a telling trajectory between its antecedents, and where he might be headed. For those who don't know his work it might, however, seem like an unresolved project. It is a pity that the accompanying texts do little to explain the work into a context because it needs a thorough, binding preface.

David William Southwood is a photographer based between Cape Town and Berlin

Milnerton site

2010-10-06T03:32:00.000-07:00

The Milnerton site is nearly live. It's modelled on the Google.com image search and has a spooky ghosting effect when the thumbs are moused over.

Kyle Morland programmed it.

I change it all the time because it's in my nature.

Gou gou! Tjoep tjoep! Nou nou! Milnerton Hoovers

2010-09-29T08:14:00.000-07:00

In the middle part of my career I suffered the crisis of conscience which all photographers in Africa with half a brain(and a conscience) suffer. The making of portraits seemed like the taking of lives to me, so I began, like the Bechers, to photograph objects in a serial fashion.

The Milnerton Market suffered at the hands of my new occupation and hoovers, particularly, took a knock.

At the same time I read a text in an academic journal which was about 'duplification' in the Afrikaans language. Repetition of a word like 'gou' indicates a certain peremptory quality, like 'don't do that thing now, do it right now!'

I thought that their domestic quality, and the repetition of the hoovers would be well suited to the text. The academic was less easy to persuade.

The author remarked that he had heard someone on a cookery show use the phrase, 'Nou nou nou'

Reportage Atri Festival catalogue 2010

2010-09-23T06:11:00.000-07:00

My catalogue arrived kind courtesy of Federica Angelucci, photo curator at the Michael Stevenson gallery in Cape Town.

Unfortunately it's written in Italian so I can't comment on what the organisers and curators say.

My handbag photos open the section which lists the participants in the SA show which is called, 'After A'.

Dan Graham's 'Homes for America'

2010-09-23T02:48:00.000-07:00

I have been obsessed with this project of Graham's for ages. Essentially bare, it's a series of photographs of tract housing in the U.S. circa '69. Why would someone not from Germany embark on a serious bit of architecture photography couched in laconicism?

Graham didn't want to take photos of architecture for the buildings' sake. He was more concerned with offering a switch between the two then dominant forms of art making: minimalism and pop.

Quoting from what he found before him was a nod in the direction of pop, and minimalism, which was concerned with 'the cultural infrastructure of design', rears it's cuboid white head in the artlessness and serialisation of the architecture's appearance in the series.

Those qualities are cool and clever, but what's really fucking top is the relationship which Graham implies between photography and modern art through what he photographs, how he photographs it and where the photos appeared in their most influential form(in magazines). I think that Paul Graham realised that when changing contexts photos changed their nature entirely. This was unclear to the rest of his peers I think.

I too have a tarpaulin shot

2010-09-20T01:46:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that iconic images re-enter the imagination, both popular and individual, with alarming alacrity and stealth.

Here is my second version of Robert Frank's famous original'Covered Car, Long Beach, California'

It's from the Milnerton Market.

The first was from a strange town in Korea.

Quote from the linked www: 'In a general sense, these comparisons are meant to remind us that the true shape of influence is one composed of feeling as well as conscious recognition, and, more particularly, to suggest that Frank found in Evans’ work not only a guide to what he might photograph in America, but a vision of how he might understand what he saw here.'

Durban Refinery

2010-09-09T04:13:00.000-07:00

Here is another shot from the tilt/shift project. It's of the Oil Refinery near the old official Durban airport. It stinks, but is photogenic.

Ey! There is no rifle in Ching Chong Cha...

2010-09-06T08:23:00.000-07:00

Not my picture

Honey, please come down from the attic-it's been 20 yrs

2010-09-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

A petroleum company have commissioned me to make some photographs of the interests they have in heavy industry and urban infrastructure.

They asked me to photograph various landscapes using the 'tilt/shift' effect. What this easy-to-do effect does is throw various parts of the scene into blur. It's been done millions of times before and will be done again, but it never ceases to look uncanny.

Scenes look like miniature models.

It's a gimmick in a sense, but I was thinking that this may be what most architects when they are faced with the world. It's easy to gloss over complex problems when the inhabitants of the scene are objectified and become gnomes with no feelings, or workers.

Venice Biennale of Architecture

2010-08-05T03:03:00.000-07:00

http://www.labiennale.org/en/Home.html

I have been asked by Noero Wolff, a firm of architects, to produce a film about 3 schools which they built, or added to, recently. The schools are in Cape Town.

The only other moving picture which I have ever made(and can mention in the public realm) was called Jokes from Old Folks and appeared in Video Room of the National gallery in Cape Town.

This second stab at film/video is a touch more serious than the first.

Here are some stills from the project.

Cobus Best.

2010-07-11T03:16:00.000-07:00

An extract from a letter to a friend:

I interviewed a car guard at Milnerton(MKT) today called Cobus. He had had his nose bitten by a boerbull and his surname is Best. He is George Best's cousin, he says. I wasn't sure about the relationship with the British hero until be told me that the dog owners gave him some box wine as a compensation for the nip. He said he poured some Martell(are you counting the nips?) into the box wine and slotted it before he had crossed the street...

What a good guy.

the etched hound

2010-07-06T14:53:00.000-07:00

I resurrected my Olympus Mju, climbed Cape Town's Mount Olympus, snapped her(Cressida) with Ilford film, came home, processed it in my bathroom and posted it on Facebook...wow

Canny inverse

2010-06-07T00:44:00.000-07:00

The canny part of the way in which this uncanny agglomeration(see post below) of objects presents itself is in the red of the pool table's felt: it's the precise inverse of perfect pool table green in the additive colour model.

When I saw this scene I thought of my delirious, drunken days at the University Club pool table I felt blue.

Cairo

2010-06-06T03:38:00.000-07:00

I was invited to speak at a conference, on African Urbanism, in Cairo.

Amongst the heavies were Abdoumaliq Simone(urban theorist) and Filip de Boeck(anthropologist).

I presented my thoughts on some ethical problems associated with photographing strangers in a city, and a method of photographing cities which gives a sense of the way in which people move through urban space.

After the conference finished I walked Cairo...

The woman with her kid lives in an area called the 'City of the Dead'

I know her name, but I don't know how to spell it. Once I have a good translation I will post it.

Enjin Magazine.

2010-05-26T05:56:00.000-07:00

Thank you Enjin Magazine.

http://www.reportageatrifestival.it/it/

2010-05-26T01:22:00.000-07:00

Federica Angelucci of the Michael Stevenson Gallery has invited me to be a part of the show mentioned at the URL above.

It opens in mid-June, runs for 2 months and is held in Abruzzo, Italy.

The 'Handbags' have been included. Seven works, each at 70 cm in diameter, printed on uncoated paper and mounted on circular aluminum discs.

It's an interesting inclusion under the problematic banner of 'documentary', but I guess it will stand out amongst straighter forms of documentary photography.

The titles specify the name of the bag owner, the colour(from a pack of paint swatches) which the owner chose as the background and the date on which the photograph was made.

eg. Simone, Lush Bog, 5.12.2009

The Big Banana Bet

2010-05-25T01:06:00.001-07:00

I was recently privy to a wager($25 000). The question on which the bet was founded was... it possible to reconstitute a peeled banana in less than 10 seconds?

In order to prove that this is possible I devised a mechanism to capture very fast motion.

Here are the results.

I am not the first person to use fancy photography to get rich. The first photographer to do it was Eadweard Muybridge.

His work was about small parts of hard-to-see actions. The narrative structure of his work was dissimilar(and strangely post-modern) to the banana series. The relationship between scenes in Muybridge's work is dissolved and each frame has its own distinct dramaturgy. In the BBB there is a distinct succession of productive actions leading to a happy finale which is justified by my friend Kilian's expressive succession.

ICON MAGAZINE spreads

2010-05-19T10:06:00.000-07:00

Wicked. Here are the spreads.

Ponte, and Cape Town.

ICON MAGAZINE

2010-05-18T12:03:00.000-07:00

The famous design rag from London asked me to photograph the city and include the controversial stadium. There they are, arranged neatly for das Camera.

I needed some sense of scale in the middle ground, so when an unsuspecting dog walker cruised past I gave her the large-format crash course.

'When I whistle depress this stalk, ok?'
'Ok'

Don't believe the hype. Large format is a piece of piss.

My dog is there as well. Looking back at the camera, returning the 'mechanised gaze' of the big boner camera which is shafting the entire city bowl.

Cressida is a woman dog so everything will be fine.

Ponte Tower

2010-04-25T04:28:00.000-07:00

Since I began to take heed of SA photographic culture, and what the newspapers detailed, I have been aware of Ponte Towers. The dark column has a long been used as a speaker through which to tell of Johannesburg's ills.

I was commissioned by Das Magazine to work there for 3 days.

It's been sanitised and is a pretty pleasant place in which to work if you do not mind heights.

The towers have been photographed as nauseam and are a cliche nowadays. I am much happier with the portraits I made, than I am with the structural work.

...and this.

2010-04-14T12:39:00.000-07:00

I am on it. What does this mean?

2010-04-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

The press release and the work in question:

1. 1910-2010: From Pierneef to Gugulective

Opens 15 April until mid-September

This large exhibition, which occupies the entire Gallery, showcases the history and diversity of modern and contemporary South African art from the time of the formation of the Union of South Africa a century ago to the present.

The exhibition covers the period when modern South African art started to articulate itself in relation to the rest of the world. The selection, primarily from the Iziko South African National Gallery permanent collection is supplemented by works on loan from other public and corporate collections around the country. Audiences can look forward to modern gems and rare treasures by Gerard Sekoto, Irma Stern, George Pemba, Maggie Laubser, Gerard Bhengu, JH Pierneef, Durant Sihlali and Dumile Feni. The exhibition acknowledges important developments in local art history such as Polly Street, Rorke’s Drift, DRUM magazine,
Resistance Art, and the rise of South Africa’s energetic contemporary art scene.

A rare overview of South African art. Don’t miss it!

theviewer.fr

2010-04-14T12:10:00.000-07:00

A polite Frenchman call Yann Linsart has contacted me and wants to publish my N1 series on his www called theviewer.fr.

Thank you Yann.

Palomino again.

2010-04-14T11:57:00.000-07:00

I am in the Palomino motel listening to NICO and reconciling myself with the decision to avoid the work which I need to do. I travelled(drove) 800 kms on my own, it's okay to have reconciliatory thoughts.

NICO has such a crap voice, but her delivery is so sincere. The pan flutes in the background give the sense of a short, bright, white flash.

Track 7 is fucking great. 'Ev reeee body will help yooo, some people are very kind...'

'Come on, give it to me....'

ICON

2010-04-14T11:53:00.000-07:00

ICON, the London-based design magazine have commissioned me to make some photographs of the new FIFA stadium in Cape Town.

Here is the shot I like the most from an unsuccessful day's work.

Click on it. It's beautiful.

They won't like this photograph. I have a sneaking suspicion.

Two old newspaper articles on the photographer.

2010-04-01T03:24:00.000-07:00

The 'modest and mature' phase

2010-03-27T03:32:00.000-07:00

See below

Warwick Triangle

2010-03-27T03:26:00.001-07:00

For the most part of my career as a photographer I have been making work in the vicinity of Warwick Street/Grey Street in Durban.

These 3 shots were made about 6 years ago and fall between the small format phase and a more 'modest and mature' large-format phase. They were made with a Mamiya 7 range-finder.

Robben Island

2010-03-27T03:07:00.000-07:00

This room is where the Apartheid Police forged letters to prisoners, amongst other things. The Mother Fuckers.

Apparently a prisoner received a letter from his wife to say that she was longer in love with him, but in love with another man, and had left the struggle. The letter was penned in writing forged in order to resemble that of the man's wife.

The scan is a rough one.

South Korea

2010-03-26T22:39:00.000-07:00

I have been invited to return to SK for a 3 months on the strength of the proposal which I list here. The object is to produce a book on a curious village called 'Pension Town'.

PT is a themed American village with Cape Cod esque wooden houses, a FAMILY MART, and a baseball net. Rich SKs(it's mondo expensive to hire a complex for the weekend) come for weekends and seem to emulate American activities by day, and get drunk at night.

This shot of a car under a tarp by R. Frank is the point of departure for explaining the theoretical underpinnings of the work. I found a similarly veiled vehicle(probably a Hyundai) at PT.

To be, or not to be

2010-03-07T07:03:00.001-08:00

This is a picture of me at the Milnerton Market. I am wondering whether I should include it it the book. I am not recognisable, and I am tilting my Stetsonius in a gesture of politeness(the wind actually). It appears if I am acknowledging a greater force, which I am.

Baldessari

2010-03-05T01:44:00.000-08:00

In his work called 'Throwing 4 Balls in the Air to Get a Square' the artist tries to do as the title suggests. In my estimation he throws tomatoes at the documentary project by implying that formalism and the modernist documentary project are redundant.

A central image in my N1 project has been a this shot which refers to his failed attempt to get a square. The balls to right of frame particularly.

The N1 project never really shows the Road, it exists by implication. And Africa is beset with easy, centralised images of itself.

SchMIFA

2010-03-04T03:55:00.000-08:00

Here is a shot of FIFA's Green Point Stadium in the early stages of its development.

These guys are fascists and prevent the sale of anything which depicts their structures. So I guess the question might be: at which point does a construction site begin to resemble the intended object, and at which point do the attendant copyright questions around its visage begin to take effect?

Murder and arrogance

2010-03-03T02:10:00.000-08:00

This is Blitz. He was a general in the notorious gangs of Pollsmoor prison. He was killed shortly after he left the safe confines of the jail in which he was a king pin.

We got along pretty well. He said to me that he could have me killed very easily. I knew this. I asked him not to have me killed, using the prefix 'please' and trying not to emphasise my concern. It worked.

I can't remember exactly why he was inside. He had killed a couple of people. I think he said on a Sunday, because they were making a noise. If my memory serves me correctly he said six.

The film was supplied to me by my employers. It had been damaged by Xrays. I am retouching it now.

PS. The singular portrait was made in his cell on a 4 by 5 inch camera with almost no light, assistant or guard. Behind me are a range of fairly nasty inmates trying to steal my equipment. It was fucking hot-that's why Blitz has his crucifix showing.

A long account of the prison gang system was written by Jonny Steinberg with whom I worked in Pollsmoor. It is called The Number.

Architecture and arrogance

2010-02-04T12:04:00.000-08:00

I recently completed some work for the architecture firm Noero Wolff. They employ me to photograph their buildings and they don't prescribe the way in which I work which makes the result satisfying to all involved.

My grounding in photography has made me aware of the way in which people occupy, and move through, space. This training combined with free architecture briefs means that the buildings are invariably couched in a broader context which includes other structures and people.

I think that if the people who surround the building are composed in way which is staggered in a particular style the viewer will be implicated in a set of vectors which make looking at the work more engaging, both in terms of scale and simple aesthetics.

Architects who revere the photograph in which their product is isolated from context are arrogant.

Russian ESQUIRE

2010-02-01T02:29:00.001-08:00

Hah! Some lewd work in Russian Esquire.

The magazine called me and asked me for the usage of a photograph from the Milnerton series. I love the photograph. It features all sorts of cheesy detritus including a poster depicting some babe just about to tear open her blouse and expose her breasts and a microphone which obviously cut its teeth on satin rugs draping the karaoke floors of Chinese immigrants' lounges.

It's a very, very well put together magazine. I was astounded. Check Bob Dylan on the cover.

Distinctive Stylus

2010-01-26T23:12:00.000-08:00

Every photographer has his, or her, own distinctive stylus.

Apple Pie

2010-01-26T09:41:00.000-08:00

I think that William Eggleston's brilliance lies partly in his ability to slice parts(car fin, black man, blueberry, alcove, leg o' lamb)of his immediate environment off which approximate to a particular Deep South sensibility.

With all these slices(cut, even, in foreign lands) he reconstitutes a steaming apple pie whose nostalgic mass must surely remind him of home.

The Seer.

2010-01-21T03:09:00.000-08:00

The bloodier photograph contains two dilemmas:

1. In some ways photography can demean private or restricted events, like in the case of this stab victim being loaded into an ambulance, on film. The viewer can become trapped in a corner when the subject looks at him or her and, in a sense, frames another act of violence. How dare you look at me?

In this case the victim is so high that although his line of sight pins me(and you), he registers nothing. The vision in his mind's eye of us kneeling at the back of the ambulance and pushing the shutter must never really have been anything more than a passing semblance in a whisp of crystal meth smoke.

2. Stephen Shore told me that in his seminal work entitled, Uncommon Places, there is no red. He has tried to denude all his photos of the colour red. He believes that the gamut of photography and print cannot sufficiently render shades of red ie. All red is the same in photographic prints despite them being varied. Red is dead. This photograph is a prime example of red is dead.

The cross on the ambulance driver's lapel is also red. Maybe the hospital services knew this when they made their Red Cross(I know they didn't, grant me poetic license), and made it so that they task would always be given immense gravity when they were depicted with the bloodied.

The same can't be said for sky blue.

The other photograph is from the same job which involved photographing a night on an ambulance in the rough Coloured areas of Cape Town. The Medic is checking the depth of a stab wound, seeing if it's pierced the lung.

I think this photograph is effective because the man's penetration of the seated's chest is much how seeing a photograph of violence can stab into our experience or not, for that matter.

This was a tragic SA scene. Everyone in the cramped house was drunk or stoned on something. Kids, folks, grannies and grandpas. Only the two innocent kids staring down from the framed photograph were exempt in that time.

“out of the RED gamut.”

2010-01-21T02:57:00.000-08:00

In photographic parlance Gamut refers to the complete spectrum of colors that a given color system can produce. In photography, the gamut available will depend on whether the photographer is working with the RGB (red, green, blue) or the CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, key/black) color model.

Because each of these color systems starts with uniquely different set of primary colors, their combinations produce a distinct set of secondary and tertiary colors. For example, while the gamut of RGB includes a pure blue, that of CMYK will render a bluish purple. Depending of the subjects of the photograph and the desired effect, a photographer will elect one of the color models to have the resulting gamut in his photos.

If a color system lacks a certain shade within its gamut, then the color is “out of the gamut.”

Keep in mind that photographs don’t have to be in color to have a gamut. For example, pictures taken with black and white film or treated with sepia each have their own unique gamut. While black and white pictures will have a color spectrum that ranges from white to gray to black, the gamut for sepia toned pictures will span from white to light brown to dark brown.

Although it originated as a photographic term, gamut has come to have a broader meaning in the English language. In general terms, gamut can refer to any kind of spectrum.

*explanation stolen from the www(photography.com) and adapted slightly

Himmel Uber Berlin

2010-01-21T02:04:00.000-08:00

These are some shots of yours truly in Berlin. '03-'05 I think.

Up a tree with Messrs Fritz and Mcubbin. Tom Fritz works at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Psychology in Leipzig which means he knows a shitload about Monkeys. Crawford knows a shitload about tree-climbing and maintains that the Converse Allstar is a 'look-no-further' in the department.

Tom told me that in Leipzig Zoo was a large ape who had been recorded(moving picture) receiving fallatio. So we trooped to the zoo. The large ape looked sad and forlorn atop his pole and the whole idea made me feel uneasy.

Ida was my number one, but I fucked up.

Whisky was my drink of choice.

I am Jo's daughter's godfather. The Polaroid is a Poloroid Polaroid.

Nails

2010-01-21T01:27:00.000-08:00

Hammering in a nail is essentially a violent act. See below.

Albow Gardens

2010-01-21T01:06:00.000-08:00

On assignment for COLORS magazine I met this suave gentleman who was unpeturbed by the photographic process. I think my presence finally mitigated all the titivating, polishing and tattooing which he had been doing for the last 65 odd years.

In my rounds of the council housing estate I also spent time with a prostitute(see 'nails'). When I asked her to open the curtains she said that it was impossible as they were nailed to the window frame to ban the light. We got along pretty well.

A very young woman lived in a room adjacent to the lounge. I have the feeling that she was kept there as a sex worker, willing or unwilling.

He husband was 7 feet tall and the meanest motherfucker imaginable. He refused to have his photo taken, but was obviously not averse to spectators because he stripped on their lounge table at weekends for cash.

N1 cover

2010-01-19T23:54:00.000-08:00

The design of the N1 book is almost done. Here is the cover. The road only really appears on the front and back covers of the book. Inside it is hinted at, but never explained as fully as in the shots in this post.

The book is being designed with Erika Koutny.

Who me, Dave?

2010-01-11T03:49:00.001-08:00

DEMILITARIZED ZONE

2009-12-07T13:08:00.000-08:00

I returned from Korea recently and made these two shots of the Demilitarized Zone(DMZ).

The first depicts a bunch of South Korean Soldiers approaching touristy binoculars which gaze across a misty valley towards a rather famished looking North Korean scene featuring an unbelievably tall flag pole.

The second depicts the binocular instrument.

Sadly the photography protocols at the DMZ prevented a shot of the valley and pole so we are resigned to a similarly lanky sentence.

conceptual piece(cough) for my friend Kyle's birthday

2009-11-14T19:51:00.000-08:00

Hb2uHb2uHbdkHb2u

The Milnerton Market

2009-11-14T19:33:00.001-08:00

Don't snigger, I know it's been a while in coming but the time is almost here.

Milnerton Market
Die Plek van Verligting

When my work on this book was drawing to a close, I handed a dummy of it to the committee that runs Milnerton Market and invited them to flesh out the images with their own captions. The most pertinent of these illuminated a bleak and unpopulated shot of the market pitch, shrouded in mist. In heavy pencil, the caption read: Die plek van verligting. The place of relief.

Milnerton Market lies parallel to the ocean on a slim shoulder of barren land, and it could just as well be a second high-water mark. At weekends, when the place wells up again into full activity, it seems as if yet another massive wave of jumble has risen from the sea and its dark channels, rushed up over the beach, jumped the railway tracks, and emptied itself in the market grounds.

Only a close and prolonged look has made me realise that for some people the market is just this: a border zone between a place of relative comfort, on the one hand, and a place of uncertainty, on the other.

Milnerton Market occupies reclaimed land near the beaches where the first white settlers in Southern Africa set foot. For many of the stall holders and micro-entrepreneurs, the strip’s activities are themselves a work of reclamation, an attempt to reclaim economic viability and sense of self.

An orange diesel locomotive shunts derisively up and down the tracks like a blunted and misdirected messenger carrying outdated news from a past when many of the privileged white marketeers worked for parastatals like South African Railways, now called Spoornet. Such patterns of redundancy are the watermark of this book.

The order of the photographs adheres only marginally to normal time inasmuch as the first photograph I took at the market a decade ago appears at the start of the book and the last photograph at the end. They are also arranged in a vaguely chronological order to suggest some of the changes that occurred over the last decade – changes at Milnerton Market, changes in my own “documentary” sensibility – as well as to nurture the sense of contingency which makes a market circuit so rewarding.

Inside those brackets formed by the first and last photographs are one character, two old ladies, and some repeating triplets, to give rhythm and guide the reader over the market’s footprint. Essentially, the order of the photographs tries to maintain an air of outward haphazardness.

At the time of the design conception, I was bored by the trend in South African photo books in which layouts privilege photography as part of a higher order. Here, photography should be taken as everyman’s pursuit and the book design seen as analogous to the market itself rather than an ode to a medium. I also don’t believe that “social documentary” photography needs to patronise the viewer by bludgeoning a message home. This book’s various bits and pieces are meant to hint at a kernel of information whose nature can vary according to each reader’s sensibility.

My guiding principle has been to try to forge an object that would appeal to any marketgoer. Like a cursory lap of the Milnerton Market, browsing the book’s contents could seem simple.

But I hope that, through your repeated scrutiny, patterns will emerge from the mess, and that when you finally discover the slow-burning ship’s lantern protruding from a dusty tarpaulin (or the silver Eveready torch with pert red ON/OFF button for next to the door in the garage), the glow it emits will last a while.

I had fun over the years at Milnerton; the cracked conversations, fellow guttersnipes, and list-makers I encountered, not to mention the fascinating accumulations of useless junk piled everywhere, have all left me addicted.

The market is like a languid eddy which expects nothing from the focused collector or unsuspecting coaster who gets taken in its current. It has a frankness which is attractive, and I’ll continue going there as long as I can.

One weekend, after Friday night’s waves have spread a new quilt of junk over the trestle tables, you might end up finding these stained pages there too.
The contributors to this book have been extremely generous, for which I am most grateful. I would like to thank Ivan Vladislavic in particular for his patience and advice.

This book is dedicated to my parents, Mike and Sue.

http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/28340214/ODKRIVANJE-NEOBI%C6%92%C3%A5AJNEGA-ZAMUJENA-IZKUNJA-IN-JU%CE%A9NOAFRIKA-DOKUMENTARNA-FOTOG

2009-11-14T19:32:00.001-08:00

Read on...

Strange and beautiful buildings in, and near, Liverpool

2009-10-16T00:17:00.000-07:00

Having always been attracted by systems which serve function primarily, with little regard for beauty in the traditional sense, this vent for a tunnel under the Mersey caught my eye with the big hook.

African Centre for Cities-UCT

2009-10-14T01:14:00.000-07:00

The ACC at UCT employed me to illustrate Chapters in their new Journal called Counter Currents. This I did and these are some results.

I was invited to present my work at a conference run by the same Faculty and part of my general rationale was the urge to speak about a certain type of photography's ability to encapsulate the 'everyday and the epic'. This idea is not mine, but comes from a book which influenced me deeply called 'The Epic and the Everyday'. I found the book at a used bookstore recently and let out a small sound indicating delight...FnA!

Another speaker at the conference asked me if my argument was not a bit binary. Well of course it is, the implication being that the photos include what falls between the outer markers.

The 3 shots are from:

1. Mitchell's Plain-a poor area on the 'Cape Flats' where 'Colored' people stay
2. The border of 'Kosovo' in an area called Phillipi in the informal settlements
3. The 'Parade' in Cape Town's CBD

Cities in Crisis

2009-10-05T14:25:00.000-07:00

A large volume has just been published which documents the colloquium that 'Cities in Crisis' was a part of.

Cities in Crisis is an exhibition which I co-curated with my fried, Professor Michael Godby, who is head of the Art History Department at the University of Cape Town. The show was exhibited at the FADA gallery in Johannesburg and is represented on the www at citiesincrisis.com

My two favourite shots are that of David Goldblatt and Guy Tillim which both collapse disparate spaces into coherent, readable space. Goldblatt's shot shows the remains of some kids' game called 'Onopoppi'. The remains are a floor-plan of a house which makes me think that 'poppi' means doll. Behind the floorplan of stones are some unfinished houses so this shot features a cartesian perspective in the foreground, and a more traditional elevations in the background. 10 points.

Guy Tillim's shot fucks with the brain by compositing the shadow of an invisible building behind a water reservoir. The resultant suggestion is a volumetric and spatial impossibility. 10 points.

Mine is the shot of a beachfront.

Go to the www to see the entire show please.

All day I dream about sex.

2009-10-05T14:18:00.000-07:00

I did a big shoot for ADIDAS.

Books, bucher, boeke

2009-10-05T13:37:00.000-07:00

Last week I stumbled upon a massive bookfair in London at the Whitechapel Gallery. I bought many books because I am obsessed with the format. Strangely, my favourite was this small yellow fellow which made me feel mellow.

Its called 'All the clothes of a Woman' and it's by Hans Peter Feldman. He is a latter- day list maker and collector. Apparently he owns a toy shop. The cover gives the contents away with inimitable accuracy.

Not two days ago in Johannesburg I found this orange chap which jumped out at me like a slap. It's a first English edition of Italo Calvino's Mr Palomar. It's really beautiful and often features the protagonist watching waves.

At times this reader feels that the act of watching the waves might be marginally more interesting that the description of Palomar watching the waves but, like the act of watching waves washing over eachother, Calvino always manages to bring the attention to attention.

I also Found a reprint of Juan Foncuberta's Fauna which is a fictional account of the travels and discoveries of a certain Dr. Ameisenhaufen. Presented like a botanist/explorer's diary the book charts the discovery of a wide variety of outlandish hybrid beasts. The good doctor even discovers an elephantine beast with a trunk which becomes luminious when the animal is distraughs-Elephas Fulgens. It's far out.

Here are some bad page shots. That's Ameisenhaufen noting 'a fact' in a small book, the lumo trunker and some other weirdos.

MAERSK

2009-09-29T14:19:00.000-07:00

MAERSK employed me some time back to travel to the Ports of W Africa to make a document of their activities. While cleansing my drives I chose these shots to compliment a earlier post called 'Take your Style'

These portraits are out-takes.

Laurent, the guy with the Ray bans, saved my bacon in a Cameroonian slum.

bisyllabic

2009-09-13T00:00:00.001-07:00

Often considered malformed by prescriptive language users I have decided to call the post... BISYLLABIC.

It has become clearer to me that a large part of my subconscious motivation for making photos stems from the actual name, or the name that springs to my mind, of the object in frame. A file called bisyllabic now sits in my 'b/w' folder and contains some of the following shots.

What mean?

1. b/w_diegang
2. b/w_foghorn
3. b/w_hifi
4. b/w_kalus
5. b/w_rattrap

You Leica?

2009-09-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

Tools only interest me inasmuch as they do what they are supposed to without making a racket or breaking-unless they are speakers in which case they can exhibit the former trait.

This is my favourite tool.

Produced in the late 70s it's diminutive body meant that it cut into the larger machines' sales. It was hastily discontinued. I think the best lens for it is a 40 mm. This is what I have. All the small-format b/w shots on this blog are made on it.

Those two chickens are friends.

30 14 36 38 25 43 07 04

2009-09-05T03:14:00.000-07:00

The Leopard

2009-09-04T02:48:00.000-07:00

When I was last in the mountains I spoke to Simon Madlala who tends to the thatched holiday house.

He told me that he had seen a leopard near the forest and that his plan was to trap the Leopard and sell the pelt to the local chief for a large sum of Rands.

On a day when he needed supplies I lifted Simon to the trade store. When we passed the place where he had spotted the leopard I tried to impress the logic of conservation onto Simon. I said that if he killed the rare leopard his son would never get to see such a beautiful animal. Simon stared forward through the windscreen and laughed a bit.

He dismounted from the Jeep at the trade store and soon afterwards I saw my father and told him the story.

'Dad, Simon has seen a leopard at the farm. He is keen to kill it and sell it to his Induna.'

My father smiled and said,

'Maybe the leopard will kill Simon'

My dad wears the tux and Simon carries a fire-fighting tool.

Last N1 Lightjet Contact Print

2009-09-03T14:48:00.001-07:00

Cressida(the long dog), Frank Chong and a Guy Called Gerald

2009-09-03T14:17:00.005-07:00

This is my dog Cressida and this is Frank Chong and his Toyota Cressida. Gerald and his Toyota Cressida also appear in this post.

I named my dog after the car which I believe represents South African motoring. My dog represents South African dogs. In Xhosa she is called 'itwina' which means something like a very typical hound of medium size. Cressida was bred by a hunting man to run down quarry. She goes like a fucking bullet from the barrel of an expensive sniper's rifle headed with ultimate precision towards the depression of an unsuspecting temple. I digress.

Frank Chong(small butchery owner) was very surprised when I came a knocking and asked him if he would pose near his Cressida in Rosettenville, Johannesburg. His surprise soon turned to a sort of shy Chinese glee which can be seen in his face behind his sunnies. I liked Frank Chong a lot.

The other dude is called Gerald. His mode of self-presentation is a little more sophisticated. This could be due to the fact that his kids were pulling the piss out of him as he leaned on his white horse. Note the enigmatic positioning of the hands.

1. I am a ninjite, back off!
2. Shit, I just dropped 5c
3. Pull a move with my hands and this photographer wont notice that I cut the 8 in half to make a '3' for my house number

Photograph for a travelling salesman

2009-09-03T12:28:00.000-07:00

Half way between Cape Town and Johannesburg, on the N1 highway, is the Palomino Motel. It is comprised of two slim, white blocks which sit tucked against a hill in tiered fashion at about 40 degrees to eachother. They overlook a broad valley flanked with mesas like wily, slit-eyed sentinels. For 24 hours each day the changing of truck gears can be heard.

The Palomino boasts neat barbeque facilities and the rooms are decked out in the most pallid of mauve and pink tones. Expectant pitchers and cylindrical glasses await the thirsty traveller.

Here's me, the view, a pitcher and glasses and a photograph for a travelling salesman.

If you ever get to the Palomino make sure you have 'Static on the Radio' by Jim White. Become a parody of yourself and wear the fox hat.

fuck policy

2009-07-31T15:28:00.000-07:00

When I was an eager tennis playing youth my mum used to drop myself and other drinking Lendls at the KOKSTAD tennis tournament. Between heavy swigs of Old Brown Sherry I caught sight of Mr Matthew Louwrens ripping around the court complex.

In later years Matthew sought to rectify a couple of society's ills and ended in the maximum security division of a psychiatric institution.

When he left he married my friend Jo and the two gave birth to Frances.

Fuck policy.

rehabilitate

2009-07-31T15:25:00.000-07:00

The coolest chick around-in treatment.

Laos

2009-07-31T14:07:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I was commissioned to spend time in Laos photographing the impact that hydro electric power was having on the mountain populations.

The effect was not good-flooding of burial grounds and general exploitation of the local populations. Norwegian machines. Simplistic. Email me for the politics of it all.

Here are some photos I made.

In case any of you have to photograph a hydro electric installation in low light requiring a 30 second exposure in a structure that is rattling like a gattling...on large format...

TIP:Park your tripod as firmly as you can on the floor and have faith that everything in the vicinity will begin to vibrate at the same frequency. It works. The money shots were these shots of the main generator shafts.

I traveled for 2 days on crap planes and in sawn-in-half B52 bombs on Mekong tributaries to reach these locations. On reaching the buildings which housed the generators I realised that there were serious light deficiencies and vibes de luxe. I screwed the ribber shoes on my tripod over the metal leg-pins and then retracted them in order that the film and the subject jig together. On returning to Berlin I was happy to check that all was sharp-sharp.

The old geyser was 114 years old then and I was late for my plane when he arrived. He is a living talisman and, on account of his age, travels for free in any medium. He was excruciatingly slow to answer questions, but hey, at double one four who wouldn't be drawn out.

The dam wall has a log on it. The trunk is about 60m long and was chucked up in a flood.

DIN1.COM

2009-07-06T12:31:00.000-07:00

It's my birthday next week Saturday and I will celebrate it in style, if swinging arms wildly, drinking clear spirits like there is no tomorrow and supplying the assembled with teutonic beats constitutes style.

I have registered din1.com in order to promote the occasion and post mixes to. I can Dj Okay. It's the Deutshe Industrie Norm which will preside-angular synthesised noise will underpin the event, which will be more of a 'art event' than a cranking techno party.

My old friend Felix Laband will step up as well. It was in the small town of Pietermaritzburg that we met many years ago. His father was my History Professor.

My efforts at the podium have been mainly confined to smaller parties catering for the the dedicated listener and dancer, and on a couple of occasions very large parties. If you are dedicated to listener then roll up. I will tell you about my in-club take off and landing.

Please find 2 flyers attached from previous times with F Laband, and a screen shot from din1.com. Go there-check it out.

And Yes, I am Davy Crockette(Monsieur de la Croquetagne)

Wallpaper-The shit that traps us

2009-06-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

Sometime ago I did most of the shots for Wallpaper's City Guide to Kaapstadt. Here are some shots from the project. They said, 'Do it how you want to do it' and they reaped the reward.

Most of the work was shot on 4 by 5 inch colour negative film.

Look at the shot of the Taal Monument-built on dodgy foundations, but a taut translation of the idea of language(Afrikaans) into a form which is supposed to suggest noise.

No, not synaesthesia.

Some of the last shots are for an almost identical commission undertaken for Case da Abitare.

http://www.phaidon.com/Default.aspx/Web/wallpaper-city-guide-9780714847207

N1-2

2009-06-24T01:40:00.000-07:00

I just returned from the penultimate thrust up the centre of the country. One more trip and I will be done photographing the N1 Highway.

Up 'til now the project has been a touch unresolved, but I think what binds the work is traces of the people for whom the highway is lifeblood. Portraits are in short supply, but the hint of a presence is pre-eminent.

In a couple of instances I have shelved the obvious or pathetic image in favour of that which suggests. It is too easy to yoke up the master narratives which drive the myth of this route and ride rough.

The gentleman whose hair is the same colour as the 'veld'(dry, yellow expanse of grassland) is a fitter-and-turner. He has been jobless for some time and his sister booted him out of the door. My guess is that he has gone hopelessly along this stretch of road in both directions many times, his hopeful thumb a tireless masthead on a sinking ship.

I prefer the shot of his back with pink spine.

The blood is from a human, the wreck and salvage crew worked nearby.

Handbags.

2009-06-11T06:48:00.000-07:00

I have often wondered what is in the handbags of the sex workers who line some of the main drags in Cape Town, and other major cities of the world for that matter.

In order to answer the question I hired a transporter van and built a small studio in the back thereof. My assistant Kyle and I purchased some chocolate bars and sodas and drove to where the workers ply their trade.

The title of the work may seem hackneyed, but some of the prostitutes certainly are not.

It seemed to us that they welcomed the opportunity to engage in something unusual. Here were two trim, satisfied young men inviting them to reveal the contents of their handbags for a small amount of cash. This is as opposed to unsatisfied rotund gentlemen in fat pick-ups asking them for far, far more.

It's likely that political correct commentators will question the way in which the bags are shown. If one looks carefully at the hands and the tiny parts of the bag-owners which enter the frame a lot can be read in their subtly scarred forearms and hands. The revealing action also is quite tender I think.

The photography which has appealed to me the most over the years is that which transgresses what has been prohibited before in an intelligent and conscious way.

Take your style!

2009-06-07T12:01:00.000-07:00

Last year I travelled to The Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Ghana and Angola. Between my commissioned work I photographed the strongmen of the ports of West Africa.

It's difficult to do this if you are not pushy because power, language and cultural relations are not knowable immediately. My assistant, Laurant, at one point, while translating and smoothing the portrait process, called on the sitters to 'take your style!'.

As soon as the workers understood this they began to fashion their own portraits and own the process and the outcome. I feel that both parties benefitted, and that an exteriority and mode of presentation typical of the general region emerged.

Man Friday

2009-05-31T03:49:00.001-07:00

I made these shots at the Kimberley Hotel in Cape Town about a decade ago. I was fairly well acquainted with the clientele because I went there to photograph quite regularly.

A crack den hid diagonally opposite the Kimberley, across the intersection on which the hotel sat. The runner between the den and the hotel(in which a range of transactions took place) was a friend of mine. He sat quietly in the corner reading Daniel Defoe until someone needed something. Then he would place his book neatly on the corner of the bar and run the errand.

About 3 years ago I organised a Party to celebrate the launch of the DISTURBANCE DESIGN BOOK. At this point the bar was colonised and now is home to a small art crowd.

Pencil of Nature/Nature's Pencil

2009-05-28T06:47:00.000-07:00

I recently visited the coastal town of Hermanus whose name always makes me feel a bit weird. The weather was of the (calo)type that William Henry Fox Talbot might have photographed and included in his exhaustive 'PENCIL OF NATURE' published 1844.

Light effects, 9m swells, squalls. It was beautiful.

Living at the base of a large and impressive rock has its drawbacks: how the hell does one represent an over-represented natural landmark?

Investigations are underway and point towards a series of discrete phenomena rendered without obvious manipulation. Some of the other shots are film, processing and subject-matter tests. For people with attention spans.

If you don't get it walk along the Sea Point promenade in stormy weather listening to Aphex Twins 'Selected Ambient Works' with some prime cans wrapped around your head. AKG

South African National Gallery

2009-05-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

The SANG bought this work(cracked basin) from a series depicting the N1 highway which stretches 2400 kms from the South(Cape Town) to the North(Zimbabwe). I am filled with gratitude. I feel like SINGING. I will leave next week to complete the project.

These are other shots from the series which represent the core, and how I have chosen to see the road-as a particular road, not 'the road' which is an ubiquitous construct.

Sean O' Toole will write the accompanying texts in a high-key fashion. Scenes he has witnessed on the highway will be described economically-probably with not much reference to history, politics or sociology. Like the photographs. Titles are similarly angular, for example 'Cracked Basin' and 'Disassociated Cow'.

Here is an example of Sean's writing:

June 16, 2006: "If the highway is the theoretical expression of a straight line, reality proposes something else. The central barrier is testament to this: it is scuffed, bent, bruised, marked and knocked out of shape. Still, cement is better than metal. It is immovable, to a degree, plus it offers a good place to sit for a man with a pool cue. He sits waiting, watching the oncoming traffic - just like the speed cops. Today the barrier is also a good place to rest a windscreen, broken but still in one piece." copyright Sean O' Toole

pills and boxes

2009-01-06T13:51:00.000-08:00

Winter is arriving and I will be bunkering down for the inclement months. I thought it might be a good plan to try and try and find some common ground between the music I look at, the photographs I read and the books I listen to.
It was not a good idea, but bunkering is a possible point of departure. Here is a shot of a bunker in Normandy where I was last week, and some shots from travels in England, France and Germany.

Emilie appears(twice, once looking into a very bright light), as does as a music school, the most beautiful staircases I have ever seen and Antje Kalus who is a friend from Berlin. She is a fashion designer and an architect. Antje's clothes vary only very slightly, much like the music of Frank Bretschneider who I also met.