Own work
Type: photography & digital collage
Status: realized
Theme: Designing Destiny: Power Within & Outside the Frame
Medium: pigment ink on cotton paper
Location/Date: Little Cape Photo Center, Cape Town, South-Africa, September 2014
KGOTLA-series: A provincial minister of the Department of Housing chairs a meeting at the Franschhoek Town Hall on disputed allocation of communal land, February 2014
Kgotla is the Setswana-word for both the space where a general assembly takes place as the assembly itself. Gatherings of community and political organizations in present day Southern Africa’s happens much the same in accordance with the age-old principles of debate at the Kgotla. The series of photographs below were made at such meetings and were exhibited at the 6th Biennial of the Month of Photography of Cape Town.
The project touches on the dynamics between the general bias with respect to the corrupt nature of the democratic meeting and the actual human finesse and effort of their attendees.
Long, wordy meetings are by their very nature non-popular, nor beloved photographic subjects. On a formal level the photographs are low-key, -quasi neutral and meaningless. They are registrations of the actual reality of decision making and debates which shape our communities. The spectator is expected to question the prints’ theme and is consequently confronted with his/her own stance towards social design and destiny.
In that way the project became as good as a literal interpretation of the 2014 Month of Photography’s theme: Designing Destiny, Power within and outside the Frame.
The project touches on the dynamics between the general bias with respect to the corrupt nature of the democratic meeting and the actual human finesse and effort of their attendees.
Long, wordy meetings are by their very nature non-popular, nor beloved photographic subjects. On a formal level the photographs are low-key, -quasi neutral and meaningless. They are registrations of the actual reality of decision making and debates which shape our communities. The spectator is expected to question the prints’ theme and is consequently confronted with his/her own stance towards social design and destiny.
In that way the project became as good as a literal interpretation of the 2014 Month of Photography’s theme: Designing Destiny, Power within and outside the Frame.
The establishment of an housing committee at Lanquedoc (1), March 2014, Digital collage
A nightly labor-arbitration-hearing preparation, May 2014
A meeting in the run-up of local elections between members of a political party and shop-owners at Mooiwater township, June 2014, Digital collage
The establishment of an housing committee at Lanquedoc (2), March 2014
