Gou gou! Tjoep tjoep! Nou nou! Milnerton Hoovers

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

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'

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

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

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...

Not my picture

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

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.