Review of the week:Sue Williamson
Fifteen years ago, travelling through Zambia, I studied the historical photographs on display in the town museum of Livingstone. Black bearers carried pith-helmeted white women in hammocks slung on long poles. Men with guns posed next to kills, a large bevy of black support staff lined up in the background. Women on lawns sipped tea while uniformed staff stood in attendance. The strong sun seemed to drain the faces of one and all of expression.
The photographers were not identified, but one had little doubt that they were white, and that the photographs were leftover relics of typical representations of life in Africa. Colonial life, that is.
How utterly different is the viewing experience provided by eyeAfrica, African Photography 1840-1998, currently on view at the South African National Gallery (SANG) and the Cape Town Castle. Here is warmth, energy, intimacy, laughter, gravity, dignity, and in nearly all cases, a remarkable and stunning sense of style: Africa and her people photographed by her own.
The exhibition has been assembled over a seven-year period by the researchers of Revue Noire, the French-based quarterly on issues of African culture, and the work on view is mainly from what is known as sub-Saharan Africa. At the SANG, the majority of the photographs are portraits in black and white of individuals or groups, taken in the home or studio and probably on commission. Occasionally the subjects are in street clothes, or even naked, but in shot after shot the subjects have dressed for the camera and posterity in elaborate and beautiful costumes and cloths.
Engage with the calm, sometimes stern, sometimes shy gaze of these portraits, and your vision of the possibilities inherent in this continent will be enriched.
Informative notes pasted alongside the displays help the viewer to gain a sense of place and of the life of the photographer concerned. We learn that Daniel Attoumo Amichia, for instance, was born in Ghana, and worked as an itinerant photographer producing family and society portraits in the Grand Bassam area of the Ivory Coast; and that on his death, his family threw his photographs and equipment into the sea. You also learn that if you happen to be in Kitambo, Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, you can still walk into Studio 3Z and have your portrait taken by Ambrose Ngaimoko.
One wonders why these notes, and indeed, a list and biographical notes of all the photographers on the show, have not found their way into the accompanying eyeAfrica catalogue, especially since it was printed locally. Apart from this unaccountable and serious omission, the catalogue is a very useful and well illustrated publication with good essays charting the history of photography in Africa, examining the different spheres of the art, and contextualising the role of the photographer in society.
EyeAfrica is split into two components, with the work at the SANG supposedly representing the historical photographs, and the work at the Castle the more contemporary work. I say “supposedly” because among the photographs in the SANG is a series of self portraits by Samuel Fosso, born in 1962, posing for his lens in a variety of costumes ranging from vest and Y-fronts to suits to high heels: a study of changing identities through imagery which is entirely contemporary in concept.
Here, too, is Seydou Keita of Mali, recently chosen by curator- for- Africa Lorna Ferguson to exhibit at the Sao Paolo Biennale. There is a generous selection of Keita’s handsome portraits on view, more than sufficient to establish that his growing reputation in the international art world is well deserved.
Of particular interest are the riskily- taken documentary photographs dating from the sixties of Ernest Cole, Gauteng photographer who died in exile, and whose work has never before been exhibited in this country.
Over at the Castle, the feast continues. EyeAfrica comes to Cape Town from the Musee de l’Art Moderne in Paris via the Sao Paulo Biennale, part of it has gone to the Barbican in London, where a selection of the work is being shown, and then it all travels to the National Museum of African Art in Washington.
For this leg, a number of South African photographers have been added, and this work will move onwards with the show. Here are the relentless photographs of David Goldblatt, a photographer whose searing black and white images of the people and structures of our country cut to the bone. Here are the deceased Billy Monk’s ribald records of the denizens of Cape Town’s low-life clubland in the Fifties, Penny Siopis’s colour photographs of museum detritus about Saartjie Baartman, mysteriously lit rituals against painted rockfaces from Santu Mofokeng.
Experimenting with images in the darkroom, Julia Tiffin allows the surface of her closeup photographs of flesh to blister, before rephotographing the result, giving a surreal representation of physical pain. Here, too, is the country through the eyes of Obie Oberholzer, Zwelethu Mthetwa, Guy Tillim, Chris Ledochowski and Cape Argus photographer Willie de Klerk , to name but a few.
So mesmerising are the images, so rich, it is all too much to take in a single visit. Allow yourself at least one day in each venue before the exhibition closes on February 27.
@Approval for the Sanction
Friday night: David Shapshak
`The secret is out. The cover’s been blown,” I thought to myself when some friends from another newspaper held a party at the hip little bar down the road from us.
It would have been okay if it hadn’t been a whole lot of journalists, who I could see sizing the place up for a spate of reviews. The influx of jol-starved Jo’burgers, I sense, is imminent.
Then again this old mining dorp does need a new contender for hottest night spot, and there are few better than the Abelarde Sanction in Brixton.
In the vein of Bob’s Bar, early 206, the Portal in its heyday, it has all the right ingredients for social immortality, or at least 15 minutes of nightclub fame.
Abelarde used to be the sanctuary that an 11th century monk set up for thinkers and scholars to meditate and study, cut off from the maddening world.
Now the bar of the same name is the next best thing to a “local” that Brixton has in this age of generic Beer & Beaver pubs.
What makes the Abelarde Sanction so appealing is how much like the “local” it’s become for a group of people whose only connection is that they live in Brixton – much the same way English pub culture developed.
I’ve found myself taking that three-block stroll to play pool or drink beer more and more frequently … Taz is an enigmatic, engaging owner, with an unusual sense of style. Above the bar hangs a portrait of Che Guevara, under which hang Taz’s Kendo swords and a crudely hand-written sign proclaiming: “This is not a democracy”.
Taz is one of those hip and cool bar owners – mostly because he doesn’t give a toss about cool or how best to be hip this month. The bar is his lounge. He lives in the back of one of the classic Fifties corner-shop buildings, and that’s where he surfs the Net and watches TV.
For a while he only served beer by the quart and whiskey – and even that flowed with a degree of a reluctance for newcomers.
Now, with a better stocked bar and an appealing swatch of magazines, he caters to the odd assortment of journalists, media folk, RAU students and other assorted Brixton dwellers with the warmth of a country inn owner.
In the last two years the bar’s large interior and raised pool area/stage have become a perfect venue for live bands – or a hot DJ, who, on the night of last weekend’s party, kept the vibe up all night.
Once a month or so, the Abelarde Sanction hosts a Female Headshaving Association event. The wall above the magazine rack is covered with snapshots from past meetings of this informal performance art spectacle, including what must be the group’s unofficial celebrity mascot: a photo of power femme Demi Moore shaving her head in that gung-ho flick GI Jane.
Not quite the kind of sanctuary that an 11th century monk might have had in mind perhaps, but just the kind of thing Jo’burg desperately needs.
Abelarde Sanction: Cnr Ripley and Fulham Road, Brixton; 837-5832