This is my house.

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

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

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

"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

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?

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

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

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

Bridge People

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.