Wallpaper-The shit that traps us

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

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.

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!

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

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

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

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

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.