Suzy Bell On show in Durban
FOUR photographers were given R4E000 each by the Durban Metro Council to take images with the theme This is Where I Live for the annual Photo Expo in conjunction with Tourism Durban and the Durban Centre for Photography. Durban-based photographers Sally Chance, Sean Laurenz, Mark Green and Leslie Chih-Han Lin were chosen to take photographs within a one kilometre radius of their homes.
The result is certainly not startling, but ironically, it took an outsider, Taiwanese photographer, Lin, to produce the finest results.
Instead of picture-postcard clichs of Durban bay at sunset and beaming rickshaw pullers at dawn, Lin shied away from commercialising imagery of Durban stereotypes. He offered a far gentler, abstract perspective that offers an original approach and an arresting insight into Durbans quieter spaces.
His work is spiritual and speaks a new language that penetrates far more than is realised with a lazy glance.
”I wish to create a world which combines with two major elements, to redesign objects and address the emotions of the spirit,” explains the poetic Lin. A repetitive row of striking shadows falls on to the harsh light of a white wall, and a simple image of a church door reveals lightness and an overbearing sense of darkness.
For Lin, a photograph of an open door reflects an open heart, where for many of us it’s sometimes just an open door. But there are depths and multiple levels of reflections in his work.
One image may reveal a Durban in harmony, while another reveals the harsh disconnection, an empty street, no people. ”I was once a deserter,” admits Lin. ”I was totally away from the path of creating works. It is not that I had lost the fanaticism and momentum, but because a continuous frustration and uneasiness had depressed and oppressed my life too much.
”I had to abandon my interest for the practical reality for a while. When I try to reconnect myself into my recent works, the pictures show a strong feeling of the loner, a sadness and an estrangement. When I travel with my camera, I try to look at things differently, according to a kind of sensibility. Sensibility is important at the moment, but it’s a feeling that is very hard to describe. For me the real life in the pictures is the flowing between a status of clarity and blur.”
The Street Photography section was at last an acknowledgement of a subculture of an estimated 30E000 street photographers whose business is based mainly in the townships.
Durban photographer Moses Khubisa conducted workshops with the photographers and the outcome suggests a desperate need for regular photographic workshops to raise the standards.
A sponsor out there, anyone?
The Durban Metro Council Photo Expo, This is Where I Live, is on at the NSA Gallery until July 23. Sponsors can contact the Durban Centre for Photography on (031) 2236867.