Alex Dodd
SOUTH AFRICA THE STRUCTURE OF THINGS THEN by David Goldblatt (Oxford University Press)
THE INVISIBLE LINE: THE LIFE AND PHOTOGRAPHY OF KEN OOSTERBROEK by Mike Nicol (Kwela/Random House)
This year has been a big one for photographer David Goldblatt. Not only did he become the first South African photographer to be honoured with a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; this year also saw the publication of South Africa The Structure of Things Then, the culmination of 15 years of photography, research and writing. The result is a searingly conscious exploration of this country’s history encoded in its strange and diverse forms.
Fans of Goldblatt’s work who have been moved by his ability to capture idiosyncrasy and telling human quirks in books like The Transported, The Afrikaners or On the Mines might, at first, be shocked by the absence of people in these images. Harsh triangular roofs cut into a cloud-dappled sky; chunky rocks on top of a corrugated iron roof keep it from blowing away; the bold, tidy pillars of the Cecil John Rhodes memorial impose themselves on a mountain wilderness; the stubborn, calculated presence of a solid brick gereformeerde kerk militates against the fragility of the ever-present grass around it. And, at first glance, you wonder – almost like clockwork, like Pavlov’s poor dog – what happened to the characters, the pulsing human life that has gripped Goldblatt in his other work. But, having lived with the book for a while the question seems stupid.
“I don’t see structures being unrelated to humanity. I don’t see much difference in photographing face, feet, bedroom, church,” he has said. And of course these images are human. Frequently the humanity of the structures photographed comes home to the viewer through the power of Goldblatt’s framing.
Many of his images are framed tightly so their only context is the rough, unshaped natural world around them. This highlights the architecture as something conceptualised, constructed and imposed on the world. Often the effect is a recognition of great folly:the silly attempts of humankind to make its presence felt for reasons that fail to transcend ego or fear, like dogs pissing on the earth to mark their territory.
In the case of the years 1652 to 1990 in South Africa – the era of baasskap or white domination on which the photographer has decided to focus – those impulses were particularly strong.
The power-affirming motivation behind the monument to Voortrekker leader Karel Landman, unveiled on 16 December 1939, differs entirely from the more humble and gentle sentiments informing the sculpture commemorating the first and the most recent political prisoners on Robben Island, for example. Goldblatt’s eye has always seen beyond ghettos and groups; the images recorded here tabulate many diverse histories.
What, one wonders, were the motivations of the woman who lived in “the maid’s room” in the backyard of a suburban house? Judging by the image, one thing is thumpingly clear:they were severely limited. The space is so small and tight she wouldn’t even have been able to make her bed face the other way.
The madness of her cramped, controlled life is further hammered home by the irony of the headline of a newspaper on her single chair: “Moon Men on the Way Back”. It’s 1969 and there’s a whole new galaxy out there, but in suburban Johannesburg not a centimetre to spare.
In his introduction and the extended captions to the images, Goldblatt gives specific insight into the meaning of the structures, and the context from which each photograph emerged.
The work is complemented by Neville Dubow’s excellent essay, Constructs: Reflections on a Thinking Eye. In it he writes about the “unfolding visual counterpoint” in the book and I am reminded of Goldblatt’s words: “Making a book is in photographic terms the equivalent of making a symphony for musicians. There are troughs – quiet moments that build up to a crescendo. It involves the ideas photographs engender and brings them into some sort of relationship with each other. It’s about design, typography, text, repro, printing – about bringing all these elements to the feast.” The power of this book’s music is great.
The publication of another seminal book on South African photography this year enables us to get behind the lens and into the obsessional inner world of multi-Ilford Press Photographer Award- winning photographer Ken Oosterbroek. Oosterbroek documented “the violence, the heartache and the hope of South Africa’s transitional years to the election in 1994” and was shot by “friendly fire” when members of the National Peace Keeping Force panicked – just nine days before polling day.
The Invisible Line features some of his most powerful and personal images running alongside a biographical text by Mike Nicol. They take the reader back to that dark time when the compulsive documenting of daily violence earned a certain band of photographers the cynical label of “the bang bang club”.
I found the book compulsive reading, swallowing page after page in an increasing desire to understand what had driven Oosterbroek, and perhaps others like him, to risk everything in his life – his love, his child, his friendships, his big dreams – for the sake of an image. The picture that emerges here is one of great contradiction: a man who wasn’t shy to express his vulnerability, but who could also be stubborn and impenetrable; an insecure man who hungered for acknowledgment, yet felt exceptional and guided by a powerful sense of his own destiny.
One of the book’s strengths is its picture-editing. The decision to include both personal and professional images by Oosterbroek, alongside pictures of the man himself by other photographers, was a wise one. The images hammer home the contradictions that emerge in the text: Oosterbroek’s rare capacity to capture both tenderness and brutality, violence and tranquillity. It becomes clear that this gift of seeing polarities in the outside world came naturally to a man torn between internal extremes.
The book exposes raw and deeply personal aspects of Oosterbroek’s life, but is also, in some senses, a bit of a tease, leaving too many questions unanswered. There seem to be huge gaps in Nicol’s grip on Oosterbroek’s relationship with his big, wild love Monica. I would also like to have been given a better understanding of Oosterbroek’s seemingly contradictory politics.
This is a man who emerged from a conservative background and lost his life in a quest to record the essence of what was happening in South Africa at the time. Exactly how ego-driven was his photographic mission? Although the temptation is to demand more elucidatory truths of Nicol, perhaps the enigmas surrounding short and remarkable lives are unavoidable. Perhaps certain questions will never be answered.
Although it excellently evokes the era in which Oosterbroek lived – conscription, motorbikes, long hair, Bob Marley, Supertramp, The Doors, Dire Straits, dagga – the book at times slips into repetitive generalisations and lacks the unfolding lyricism that would have lent added weight to Oosterbroek’s legend. Still, it’s a gripping and worthwhile read, and the images featured are a powerful reminder of what made Oosterbroek such a legend – even before his tragic death.