/ 13 July 2007

Room to breathe

Quite a lot of the people in my photographs are dead … from cancer or Aids,” says Jenny Gordon, sifting through photographs at the Durban Art Gallery (DAG) as she finalises the content of the Breathing Spaces exhibition.

The gallery’s air conditioning seems to have been set on beserk, but the air is warmed slightly by the chatter and excitement of township kids from Wentworth, Merebank and Lamontville who are busy making banners for the opening bash.

Some of their photos, with family portraits and studio pictures drawn from family albums dating back to the 1940s, will be used in the exhibition, which focuses on life in these townships, within choking distance of Durban’s south-basin hub of heavy industry and oil refineries.

“People suffering from TB and Aids here are in a completely different position from people in a place where the air is cleaner because of the pollution issue,” says Gordon as she grapples with which of the photographs of people with HIV/Aids she should use.

Pointing to a few black-and-whites of a young girl, she says: “The family have given permission for them to be used, but I don’t think they fully realise what I am conceptualising.”

Gordon, a lecturer at the Rhodes University school of journalism and media studies, and co-curator Marijke du Toit, from the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s historical studies department, are sensitive to the level of HIV/Aids denial in these communities and the repercussions of having “the condition frozen by a photo” for public consumption. But they are simultaneously trying “not to reaffirm the stigma” as they attempt to create a platform for historical and contemporary stories from communities that they believe have, to a degree, been marginalised.

“It explores how environmental injustice translates into day-to-day living and how people have made lives for themselves, also asking questions about gender and identity, and the experience of people from different generations,” says Du Toit.

The exhibition has it roots in the South Basin Photography Project, which the duo initiated in 2002 in the coloured township of Wentworth. The project was then extended to the Indian township of Merebank and the worker dormitories in Wema, Lamontville, the black township.

Initially arming teenagers with disposable cameras to document their stories, the project grew to include “activists and older people, we ended up with 15-year-olds to 85-year-olds”, says Gordon.

Gordon admits that her modus operandi is to spend as much time as possible getting to know her subjects and that, as the duo connected with environmental activist groups in the area, they felt even more compelled to ensure that the exhibition retained as much humanity as possible: “It was interesting that groups like the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance were very scientific in how they mobilised and their responses to the pollution, so we really tried to work around the idea that ‘people are living there’,” said Du Toit, describing the exhibition, which also includes Gordon’s panoramas, smaller portraits and texts from interviews.

The results are poignant, personal and sometimes joyful renditions of life framed by the grimy poetry of industrial architecture, kitsch religious iconography and small, sharp breaths drawn from asphyxiated attempts at normalcy.

Breathing Spaces: Environmental Portraits of Durban’s Industrial South exhibits at the Durban Art Gallery until August 21