Jo’burg Art Gallery has found an unlikely audience — in street-photographers and their clients. RUTH SACK
THE Johannesburg Art Gallery has for years expressed the desire to become meaningful, relevant and, perhaps, useful to its immediate neighbours — the people who occupy and commute through Joubert Park.
Well, it’s happened — though not in the expected way, and through an unexpected ally: the street- photographers, who have stationed themselves in the park to snap their customers in picturesque surroundings (picturesque for the centre of Johannesburg, that is).
Recently, rather than posing before the trees or the fountains, more and more of these clients have been requesting to be depicted with the artworks. At first only the sculpture in the park and around the entrance to the gallery was used; then it was discovered that the inner courtyard offered more sculpture, a kind of grandeur, and relative privacy as well. And the gallery staff appeared to be unperturbed.
Now, a familiar sight is the steady traffic of photographers and their clients through the lobby and in and out of the courtyard, throughout the week. During quiet times, the gallery almost seems to be theirs alone, a huge and elaborate photographic
Posing against or upon the artworks — standing to attention next to them, voluptuously reclining on them, or embracing them, even — these photographic subjects enliven the unyielding bronzes with new purpose.
Who matches client to sculpture? “Usually they know, or they study my display board,” said Gift Mabaso, “but if it’s a new client, I choose for them. Especially if they are new to the city: they have no idea. Also I get many foreigners from Africa and suchlike. They have these pictures taken to show people at home what Jo’burg is really like.”
A customer, Colin Thole, is being photographed in front of the David Brown sculpture. “It’s my fourth or fifth time,” he said. “This one I like best but I’ve been taken at some of the others. Only not the naked woman. My wife would say: ‘Who is this you’re sitting on with firmer breasts than me!’ Actually I love this one (the Brown) best because it’s flying, it’s running. It’s funny, although I don’t know what it means … I send these photographs to my family in Pietersburg. Every time they ask me: ‘What is this in the picture behind you?’ I say to them: ‘Just art.'”
The photographers disagree with one another about the most popular choice. Mabaso’s clients favour the “old lady” (the Bourdelle of 1925, in the courtyard) “because she’s very sad, she has strong feelings; you can send a sad message”.
Nkosana Khumalo differs. “The women like the male standing up. And the men love the woman sitting naked. But the real favourite is the Fish, definitely. And before they brought the Fish, everyone wanted the Car. We like the Car too, because it has many good views, many positions. People can play with it, and get
(A quick glossary: the male standing up is The Captive by Henry Ward, the woman sitting naked is Giard George’s nude; the “Fish” is Andries Botha’s commissioned bronze, and the “Car’s” official title is Tightroping, by David Brown.)
The photographers agree that figurative work wins hands down over abstraction. “You do find some who want to pose with the Pipes or the Grave; but only a few. Perhaps one in 10.” (The “Pipes”: Edoardo Villa’s piece. The “Grave”: Talion by Gavin Younge, set on a marble slab.)
But one customer, collecting her pictures from photographer Raphael Nhlanga, proudly showed us her image, with the Younge behind her. “I was dressed up that day, as you see. So this sculpture was like me, powerful and sharp. Ready for anything. That’s why I chose it.”
It seems unquestionable that a great number of people have been introduced to the gallery for the first time through these photographers.
“People never used to think this building was for them to enter,” says Nhlanga. “Some people have been in this park for five or 10 years and thought this was a sort of office for the government. Some would say they couldn’t see the way in. But they are always really happy the first time they go in. Actually, they are
“Usually,” says Nkosana, “if I take a new customer into the gallery, after we have finished, they ask to remain and to look around. Sometimes they come out to me again and say they have found a painting or maybe a carving inside that is wonderful, will I take their photo in front of it? I explain that indoors it is not allowed.”
“If,” says Mabaso, “the gallery were to set aside a few paintings for us to shoot as backgrounds, people would rush. We’d be happy to pay two or three rand a time. I tell you which I would actually choose.” We go down the stairs. “Any of these.” His gesture takes in … the
The Pierneefs? Symbol of Afrikaner possession and occupation of the land, as backdrop for the young, black inhabitants of this city? Why? “They are grand; but peaceful, with quiet colours. And it’s the rural areas, you know — the mountains, the trees. Very suitable.” And so, once again, icons and symbols are taken over and passed along, invested with new emotions and put to new use.
In previous years, photographs such as these would have been set up in studios, in front of equally idealised landscape scenes (more probably a middle-European forest than a Pierneef krans). But the essential issue has not changed: the presentation of the self is reinvented, in a context that is constructed not of real life, but a greater-than-ordinary space, a space made special, ideal. Here, such a perfectly constructed context is provided by the artworks.
Move over, pigeons