South African history through the eyes of a photographer

David Goldblatt is among photographers who’ve been consistent in documenting South Africa’s history. He now has a comprehensive archive of the country’s ever-changing landscape.

One of his iconic images is the Soccer City — a photo taken just before the kick off match of the 2010 World Cup, which took place on African soil for the first time.
While most photographers concentrated on the beauty of the calabash shaped stadium, Goldblatt juxtaposed the stadium against the ruins of what was formerly Shareworld, a theme park built for Soweto residents in the late 1980s.

A lot of time was spent scouting for that viewpoint because he wanted an image that “would define the nature of the investment and show how certain prominent people wanted to keep the masses happy as well as boost their wealth and aggrandise themselves.”

To Goldblatt, Soccer City highlights certain “critical and unsatisfactory aspects” of Johannesburg. He reasons that the millions of rands spent building the stadia should have been used to boost South Africa’s educational system. Goldblatt attributes the high levels of unemployment to a lack of proper education, which in turn perpetuates crime.

“The education today is as Bantu education — a system designed to make people unemployable in a modern technological society.”
Another aspect of the city he finds disturbing is the refugee situation. Goldblatt took images of Zimbabwe refugees housed at the Central Methodist Church in downtown Johannesburg. He also has images of crime, reflected in a photo series of ex-offenders.

The pictures, taken at the exact spot the ex-offenders committed the crime, are straightforward.

Trevor Mabuela from Alexandra Township, for example, is one such ex-offender. Goldblatt took his picture in Kew, a suburb of Johannesburg where he tried to hijack a woman as she reversed out of a factory in 2000. Mabuela was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison but he appealed and only served five.

These and other images were part of an exhibition titled TJ: Some Things Old, Some Things New and Some Much the Same held at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg last year. TJ is an obsolete acronym for Transvaal Johannesburg — which were prefix letters for cars before the computerisation of license plates.

“For years I dreamed of doing a book about Johannesburg and calling it TJ. When the opportunity arose, TJ had become obsolete but I stuck with the letters because they signified a great deal about Johannesburg and in particular, that while a great deal has changed, a great deal hasn’t and it’s going to take a long time for it to change,” said Goldblatt.

South Africa, The Structures of Things Then (1998) is an interesting book that contains pictures of houses, churches, mosques and synagogues and it took five years of research to put it together. The images show how South Africans express themselves in structures.

“If you bought a house, how we choose to organise it is an expression of our values. If you look at our structures, in my opinion, we express ourselves almost nakedly and we do not hide things.”

The church was a significant force during the apartheid era and for some it was obvious which side they were on.

“The Anglican churches are quiet and undemonstrative; they did not rock the boat while Afrikaner churches made major statements.”

Other books that he has published include On the Mines (1973) and In Boksburg (1982) which have had numerous exhibitions.
Goldblatt, now in his 80s, grew up in the small gold mining town of Randfontein and started taking pictures while in high school.

The self-taught photographer bought a 35mm camera for commercial photography for local and international magazines, which helped him refine his skill.

At the same time, he enrolled as a student at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and did a Bachelor of Commerce degree. It might have seemed ironical that he undertook a course that had very little to do with photography but he argues that it “gave him an understanding of the world and taught him how to think.”

Today, Goldblatt uses an old-fashioned 4 by 5 camera and mainly takes black and white pictures for his personal projects because he feels that colour is “too sweet to express the kind of situations in South Africa.

I need the rawness of black and white.”

Every now and then he takes colour photographs but still controls the colours as he would in a darkroom by either over saturating or increasing the contrast to match the message he wants to put across.

Despite having made powerful statements with his pictures, Goldblatt says he is neither an activist nor a missionary and unlike other photographers who used the camera as a cultural weapon against apartheid, he regards himself as an “unlicensed critical observer of society.”

‘A LITERARY CRITIC IS THE AUTHORS BEST FRIEND’

Of all the job changes that Ken Walibora has gone through – schoolteacher, probation officer, author, broadcaster, professor – he describes the shift from journalism (he worked as a news presenter at NTV) to academia as the most painful.

“I loved broadcast journalism but it had lost its allure and novelty so I yearned for something mentally stimulating, challenging and more riveting. I also wanted a quiet life away from the limelight,” he said.

According to Prof Walibora, being an academic has fulfilled his desire for mental stimulation and engagement. Indeed, after leaving the media, Walibora studied for two masters degrees — African-American and African Studies, and Comparative Cultural Studies — concurrently and earned them on the same day at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Just before he completed his masters degree in Comparative Cultural Studies, the university offered him a tenure-track assistant professorship, which means that before he is employed permanently at the university, he has to fulfil “certain terms within a given period of time.” He got this position, which he says is coveted by PhD holders in the US, after an “exceedingly competitive and rigorous elimination process from a pool of richly accomplished candidates.”

Since 2009, Walibora has split his time between teaching, research and representing the Department of African Languages at the University of Wisconsin Madison. The professor, known for his impeccable Kiswahili, actually teaches literature in English.

“My competence in Swahili is an added ingredient but is not a necessity. It is my competence as a literary critic that gives me the job.”

Quoting British literary critic Terry Eagleton, Walibora describes literary critics as people “who say about literature what literature doesn’t say about itself.” While they might be perceived as “parasites” for their dependence on creative writers to exist, critics help both the writers gain visibility and the readers make sense of literary texts.

Walibora believes that critics enable writers to understand their own works, which in turn improves literature as a whole.

“I am sometimes struck by the ingenuity of a critic’s comment on my own creative works just as I am astounded by the less than obvious depth and richness or shallowness and weakness of creative works when I wear my critic’s cap.”

He admits that being on the receiving end of literary criticism is both a blessing and a curse.

“As a writer, I have profited tremendously from critics. They often help me to rethink my writing strategies, to ascertain what works well and what needs to be improved, what pitfalls to avoid and, above all, what to ignore.

“Overall, I have had fresh insight into my own works because critical responses by, for example, Prof Kimani Njogu, who made me realise the parallel between my Siku Njema and other novels from the West, Prof K. W. Wamitila on the preponderance of the journey motif in my novels and Timothy Arege on the incongruity of the narrator’s dream in Siku Njema.”

Walibora advises writers not to “assume the mien of gods,” as one critic put it, “conducting themselves as infallible and unteachable.”

According to Walibora, literary criticism in the East African region cuts both ways. It is good because “the region is home to some of the most eminent critics in Africa as well as creative writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o, John Ruganda, Chris Wanjala, Kimani Njogu, Simon Gikandi, Austin Bukenya and Tom Odhiambo; it is ugly because the material conditions of scholars in the region are pitiable – so much so that some brilliant minds have either migrated to the West or are interred in moonlighting or alcohol.”

Walibora has won numerous literary, media and academic awards, written novels, short stories, poems, plays, journal papers and encyclopedia entries. He has published over 30 books mostly fiction. These include Kipara Ngoto (2000) Ndoto ya Amerika (2003), Kufa Kuzikana (2003) and Innocence Long Lost (2005). Sina Zaidi na Hadithi Nyingine, Machicha ya Taifa na Hadithi Nyingine, Wajaleo: Diwani ya Mashairi and others are in the offing.
In addition, he contributes to peer-reviewed academic journals. He is currently working on a book,Human Rights and Narrating Prison Experience: Self-Nation and Political Incarceration in Kenya.

“I open a new chapter after I close another. I would like to have an ordinary and quiet life away from the glare of the media and if a teaching opportunity arises in Kenya I would be happy to share the skills I have learned,” Prof Walibora said.

When A Photograph is Worth More Than A Thousand Words

 

 

Bibi Aisha's image taken by renowned photographer Jodi Bieber as it appeared on the cover of the August 2010 issue of Time magazine. The image won the WPP 2010

Photographer Jodi Bieber’s image of Bibi Aisha that won the 2010 World Press Photo of the Year award has some similarities with an iconic image taken by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry in 1985. McCurry took a portrait of an Afghan girl called Sharbat Gula and when the picture was published on the cover of the National Geographic magazine, many people were drawn to her striking green eyes. Aisha is also from Afghanistan and her portrait was published on the cover of TIME magazine in August 2010 and soon sparked a storm of controversy.

At first glance, one notices Aisha’s gaping hole on her nose. Her ears too have been chopped off but the scarf and her long hair conceal that. Her crime? She was accused of “shaming her in-laws” after she ran away from her abusive husband. Her Taliban husband apparently cut off her ears and nose to “teach other women a lesson.” The accompanying text alongside the image on the TIME magazine cover read “What happens if we leave Afghanistan.”

The image attracted contrasting interpretations from different people. For some it functioned as a press image while others saw it as a political image. Some critics accused the photographer of glamourising and objectifying her subject. “You made Aisha look like a model whose nose had been photoshopped away,” one source said. War critics accused the magazine of “war pornography” and of “deliberately manipulating reader’s responses to the war in Afghanistan.” Other critics felt that the World Press Photo (WPP) jury in Amsterdam did not consider the broader issues the image brought out.

WPP judges felt that Bieber’s image stood out among the more than 100,000 submissions they received. Commenting on Aisha’s image, jury chair David Burnett said that “it could be one of those pictures where if somebody says, ‘you know that picture of a girl…’ you know exactly which one they are talking about.”

These varied reactions to the picture raise important questions in documentary photography. First, how should photographers approach their subjects and what responsibilities do photographers have when taking pictures of sensitive subjects?

At a session hosted by South African digital artist Christo Doherty in Johannesburg, Bieber described her approach to the assignment. TIME magazine assigned her to do a portrait series of different women living in Afghanistan. Her translator helped her to get a mental picture of what living in Kabul was like before meeting up with Aisha at the Women for Afghan Women (WAW) shelter.

Bieber then had what she describes as “small talk” with Aisha just to calm her down and took some few pictures. “I felt it was not working so I put my camera down and I saw she was really beautiful. I just saw Aisha for Aisha.” Through her translator, Bieber told Aisha that she could never have imagined how it felt like to experience what she had gone through but what she could do was to work with her to create a portrait to show her inner beauty. “It was a bit weird but I did feel that the energy changed and that was when I took the pictures.”

Bieber revealed that she started doubting herself after she sent off the pictures to TIME magazine and feared that they might be disappointed with the way she photographed Aisha. “Other photographers would probably have photographed her in a vulnerable way; maybe projecting Aisha as a victim of violence; exposing her mutilated nose and ears,” she said.

However, TIME’s managing editor, Richard Stengel described the image as “powerful, shocking and disturbing.” He gave a lengthy explanation in the magazine justifying the use of the image on the cover. His main concern was Aisha’s safety and the effect of the image will have on children. “We do not show this image either in support of the US war effort or in opposition to it. We do it to illuminate what is happening on the ground,” Stengel explained.

Once an image is in the public domain, the photographer has no control of people’s reaction and interpretation. Moreover, a picture could sum up a moment and address a vast audience the world over just like the image of Nguyen Kong’s images of children fleeing down a road in South Vietnam after being burned by a misdirected firebomb in 1972. For Aisha and Sharbat their images are perhaps a reflection of the plight of women living in Afghanistan.

Brenda from the Real Beauty series taken by Jodi Bieber

Bieber’s approach to her work reveals that photography is not all about recording moments but rather photographers need to understand their subjects and add an honest voice to their pictures especially when photographing sensitive topics.

Bieber, previous winner of eight WPP awards, has had several exhibitions locally and abroad. One of the most popular ones is a portrait series of some South African black and white women titled “Real Beauty,” which won the Picture of the Year International award ( POYi ) in 2009. The women Bieber photographed pose just in their underwear projecting either their personality or fantasy. The series explores the idea of women being comfortable with their bodies at a time when most are obsessed with their weight.

 Last year, she published a book titled Soweto (2010), which features colour portraits of cross section of Soweto residents. The pictures reveal the rising sub-cultures among the youth, the prosperity and the general lifestyle of Sowetans, which is quite in contrast with the stereotypic views many have of Soweto.

The book features colour portraits of a cross section of Soweto residents

Between Dogs and Wolves, Growing up in South Africa is a book that features black and white pictures of a generation of young people growing up on the fringes of South African society. “I used photography as a vehicle to discover what was going on in my country and the pictures were a reflection of what was going on.”

Bieber studied at the Market Photo Workshop and later joined The Star newspaper in 1993. She participated in the World Press Photo Joop Swart Master class and in 2010 returned as a Master.