Peter Bendheim Photography

Christmas in a small town

2011-12-23T09:40:00.005Z

Christmas in a small and poor Free State rural town in South Africa; dark days for the economy, but still Christmas and the festive season are celebrated; a hope for better days next year.

Nikon V1

4 days before Xmas

2011-12-22T10:04:00.007Z

Four days before Xmas and there is a tramp passed-out at the side of the road. Next to him, a doll, with its built in voice singing a baby-soothing song. Xmas should be about making those who have nothing feel better; somehow easing their pain for a few brief moments...

Nikon V1

Into the Light

2011-08-17T10:23:00.015Z

Into the Light is a travelling exhibition to showcase the work of the Ubuntu Community Chest, an important umbrella charity in Durban, South Africa that celebrates its 80th year during 2011. The exhibition will be at several galleries during the last months of 2011, starting at the Corner Café, and moving to Artspace Durban, and then to the Fat Tuesday Gallery.

I’m sitting quietly on the floor, camera in hand, at a rehabilitation centre for children with severe disabilities in Durban, South Africa. Staffers are trying to get the children to eat. I’m trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, but the camera is an obtrusive and large mechanical device, even if most of the children don’t know what it is, or what it does. The young boy I’m sitting next to on the floor, doesn’t want to eat, and pushes the food out of his mouth. A few toys placed into his hand by a caregiver are flung on the floor. He looks at me, not knowing who I am or why I am there and my presence clearly disturbs him. He bursts into loud, uncontrollable tears and nothing or no-one, not even his parents can console him. I gently move away, slipping into the shadows, waiting perhaps, sometimes for what seems like ages to somehow attempt to become part of the normality of the scene and be an accepted part of the daily goings-on.

At another institution, a home for the elderly, I’m taken in to visit an elderly lady and her husband. They are having an afternoon chat. I’m invited to join in the conversation, and while I’m listening and participating, I’m feeling both uncomfortable with sharing their intimate teatime, and at the same time, concentrating deeply for that fleeting tender moment that I just intuitively sense will happen. All of a sudden, there it is, a few words exchanged between them, a soft and tender moment; a loving glance that defies the presence of the camera, and is only broken once the shutter clatters across the gentleness of a sun-filled room. I have the moment, one of exquisite gentleness between two people who must have spent a lifetime together, and for that moment their connectedness was so strong that they forgot all about me, an intruder on their intimacy.

Every year for the last nine years, I have spent time doing work pro-bono for the Community Chest, an umbrella charity body in Durban, South Africa. This venerable institution has been in operation for eighty years this year, assisting nearly 100 often-struggling charities in KwaZulu Natal, an overpopulated and economically challenged province in the newly democratized South Africa. It’s one of the few bodies that have been able to distribute funds, know-how and care with none of the corruption and misappropriation of funds so common to the developing world. It’s an organization that is almost entirely reliant on volunteerism, an important concept in building societies anew in an unbalanced country like South Africa, with huge and growing gaps between rich and poor, and where state funds often don’t end up benefitting the people who need them most. Those people in need comprise the very young, some with terminal cancer, HIV, those who are orphaned, to the old, sick and helplessly frail. And there are also groups of people with limited abilities making and assembling products for industry, learning to cope in an unrelentingly capitalist world that often forgets those of less ability in a quest for cheaper skilled labour to march to the tune of the never-ceasing production line.

Although I find working for the Community Chest a challenging task, it’s probably the assignment I look forward to most. The challenges are in many ways similar to those faced by all documentary photographers, and in taking the images, I find that I have to face issues that make me question my own morality as a photographer.

For a start, people with disabilities are more vulnerable to the exploitative potential of the camera. Photographer Diane Arbus, who perhaps redefined how we see people at the margins was, despite being lauded for her contribution to modern photography, also criticized by many, most notably Susan Sontag, for not only being exploitative but placing people in a context of despair and hopelessness. I have always tried to be ultra sensitive to the way I have portrayed people who often don’t have the voice to say no to the intrusion of the camera; searching for the subtle expressions of fear and mistrust, trying to interpret emotions that would make me back off rather than invade the extra private and unexplored inner worlds of the people I see through my viewfinder. I have been careful, for example, not to convey hopelessness by minimizing the way people fit into photographic space, by using an ultra-wide angle lens to somehow diminish their stature and scale in their surroundings.

In a very real sense, then, these are classic documentary works of photography in style and execution rather than gimmicks to distort and manipulate the emotions of the viewer. They make no attempt to judge the external context, to place people in a world that is either filled with hope or devoid of meaning and prospect. I become the documentary voyeur; I let the eyes and the body language communicate directly with me and in so doing allow the viewer to interpret their own emotional response rather than attempt to construct that world for them as is so often the nature of contemporary portraiture.

The viewfinder itself, hidden behind prisms and mirrors and lens elements forms a substantial emotional barrier between the photographer and the photographed. It’s the shield that allows me to see in a way that for that brief moment isolates me from the temptation to construe emotional judgments at the time I make the image. It’s only afterwards, reviewing the material, that I often experience moments of deep emotional strain, and mental exhaustion; when all the work is done, and in the silence of my office, late at night, I ponder on the images that are now forever etched onto my mind and the hard drive of my computer.

When I spoke at the opening of this exhibition at the celebration of the Community Chest’s 80th anniversary, I reminded people that these images were just a frozen moment in time; and that since the images were taken, some of those photographed may have moved on to a better life, or died, or in some way found themselves in a different emotional or physical space, be it better or worse. After the talk, one of the directors of an old age institution came over to me and talked fondly of a man in one of my photographs who had died a year or two ago. I had not known this, and director went on to say that this picture had really brought such good memories to him of this elderly man. “His wife would so love that image, “ he said, “ she only has memories, and no photographs at all.” I was happy to promise to send her a copy. If I have just touched the soul of a single person in this body of work, the effort has been more than worthwhile.

Sweat, Pay, Drive

2010-12-19T14:48:00.001Z

Sweat, Pay, Drive
A few days in Bali, Indonesia

One of my favourite things to do is to travel, and the opportunity to immerse myself along with a camera in the rich, exotic and colourful destinations of South East Asia is a pleasure that is hard to beat. So it was with much anticipation and a bag full of camera gear that we headed off to Bali, Indonesia, a deeply spiritual island and of course, popularised in that recent book and movie, Eat, Pray Love, referred to in Bali (and not without good reason) as “that damned book.”

One should never take photography as a given or for granted; don’t assume that your eyes will be open to seeing the image even after years of experience, or that you will find the right places at the right times. I have learnt, and this was an add-on to that learning experience, that photography is a curious and intangible mix of chance, circumstance, skill and magic, and those factors all need to tumble together simultaneously. Sometimes they just don’t.

Our resort was in Legian in the heart of the tourist area, part of a long strip of similar resorts sandwiched between a seemingly endless street of souvenir shops and a stretch of busy beach, packed with surfers, wannabe posers and bikini babes. The hotel grounds afforded few opportunities for photography. Ok, there were some around the pool, which was occupied almost exclusively by Australians tanning, eating burgers and chips, and watching the Ashes on TV at the pool bar with the inevitable large beer mug or three on hand. Some of these people were quite interesting photographically, including one huge fella who was obviously expanding his Tattoo on a daily basis at one of the local ink shops. But none of these folk lent themselves to comfortable photography. I’m not one for lurking paparazzi style behind a palm tree with a long lens, and no one wants their privacy invaded on holiday even if their body does make a definitive social statement. In the internet era, a lot of people in the US and other countries where there is paranoia about security, see photographs of themselves as a gross violation of privacy, something that was never really an issue before 911 and the advent of ubiquitous cheap and cheerful cameras and mobile phones with built in cameras. Photograph someone’s kids nowadays and you’re a paedophile, take an image of the wrong building and you are planning a terror attack. It’s part of the irony of 21st Century photography; there are millions more cameras, but the freedom to use them has diminished considerably.

Street photography in the endless kilometres of souvenir and tourist shops that straddled Legian and Kuta was not a terribly exciting prospect, or if it was, I just wasn’t seeing the images. The people on the street were for the most part foreigners, while the locals huddled deep within the air-conditioned refuge of their shops, except for the more desperate ones, who actively offered you row upon row of fake Ray Bans and Rolex watches on the street. Every now and again, a wonderful doorway, and a glimpse into someone’s home temple would break the visual monotony. I felt the urge to wander into these secret and ancient spaces, but they were private spaces and I would have been intruding in someone’s home. So apart from a few tentative steps, I didn’t.

The wonderful thing about places like Bali, and that in fact applies to most of South East Asia, is that you can safely walk the street, any time of night or day with all your best camera equipment and be totally safe. You may be able to do better street photography in the streets of South Africa, but you stand a good chance of not having your camera with you upon your return home.

Bali is drippingly and unrelentingly hot. Walk ten metres anytime between 10am and 4 pm in summer and you are guaranteed to be sweaty and lethargic in minutes. While your equipment is safe, hotels and shops have their air conditioning set to coldroom levels, so the minute you take your camera outside, you see instant misty condensation forming on the lens and sensor. Internal water staining is not a risk I like to take with my better lenses, so one has to endure the whole exercise of putting your gear into cold air-filled plastic bags and letting them equalise for about half an hour when you walk out into the thick, soupy air of Bali.

After a few days of this intolerable exercise, the sheer weight of my camera bag, and the blood sapping heat, the D700 and lenses got to live pretty much permanently in the hotel safe, and the compact cameras, the Canon S90 and G12 came along for the ride.

By now I must be sounding to my readers like a lazy photographer. I’m not. Far from it, in fact. A month or two ago I spent the afternoon shooting in a township after sustaining a severe fall which required several stitches later than evening.

But if all the elements are not falling into place, then it’s best to let go. Relax. Don’t push yourself to see something you are just not seeing. That will compound the frustration. I’ve learnt that tomorrow, or next week or next month, are filled with new promise and fresh opportunity.

Philosophy aside, we decided to take a road trip inland to attempt to discover the real Bali. So, we got a driver, and a car and explained to our driver what we wanted to see. “The real Bali,” I said, “village life, the coffee plantations, the cool interior and the volcano that is much a mystic part of Balinese culture, rice paddies like green stepping stones rising into the jungle.” Well, I wasn’t quite that poetic, but that’s what I wanted to see.

Our taxi driver was a friendly and affable man who talked continuously, as if he had swallowed a cassette tape. Sometimes we got the gist of what he was saying. And often we didn’t, but we would nod and um and ahh at appropriate places in the monologue because it seemed the polite thing to do. All this time I watched all manner of instant images speed past the passenger window, but by the time one might have been able to find a place to stop, the elements of the jigsaw would long have tumbled out of place. Finding a place to stop in Bali is not easy. There must be more motorbikes and scooters in Bali that any other place on earth. Seriously.

The real difficulty of photography in Bali is trying to find places that are easily accessible and are not being fully exploited for tourism. Almost every country road we travelled on had row upon row of shops, millions of carved parrots, statues, paintings, chairs, tables and so on. How they find customers for these warehouse loads of ornaments is anyone’s guess.

Even the volcano had been harnessed into the service of tourism, with a boom gate and an entrance fee and rows of shack like restaurants and refreshment houses touting for customers and clinging tenaciously like Praying Mantises to the side of the steep banks that overlooked this spiritual mountain.

Most of my images of Bali hint at this underlying commercialism, since it is so pervasive. Even a traffic policeman in the middle of nowhere smilingly and pleasantly extracted a small bribe from our taxi driver. Making a dollar is essential to life, and seems to balance in comfortably with the temples and gods that line every street to serve people’s more spiritual needs.

My only bit of real photographic trickery is the expansively green and stepped image of the rice paddies, a seemingly charming rural scene, unspoilt and peaceful. What you don’t see, is that five feet behind me is a long string of tourist shops, T-shirt vendors, touts and postcard sellers as well as tour buses filled with folk speaking Russian. The deception of imagery. I have been more brutally honest with the rest.

So there it was. Our well-meaning taxi driver’s version of the real Bali. But it was the tourist version, neatly packaged in bite size chunks, a consumable product like French fries. All wallet and no soul.

Ok, so Bali wasn’t going to win me any photographic awards, but I learnt a few valuable lessons. First off, access to the heart of a country varies dramatically from place to place, so do all the research and planning you can before you get there. Secondly, travelling light can be ok. You can do some amazing things with today’s high-end compact cameras. Thirdly, sometimes it just is not meant to be, no matter how hard you try. And finally, if it’s not meant to be this time around, it’s not gone forever. It will return.

I never got into the real soul of Bali. It is there, of that I am sure. I did get to understand a few things about the place, though. It’s a very likeable destination. It’s a place of small details, vignettes, and subtleties. Maybe next time, maybe not…but that’s the essence of the photographic journey.

Cameras Nikon D700/Canon G12/Canon S90

A short visit to South East Asia

2010-02-06T00:35:00.009Z

I have a deep passion for South East Asia, and for Malaysia. I love its diversity of sights, sounds and visual signals.

Nativity in the Suburbs

2009-12-26T19:45:00.004Z

A Merry Xmas/Festive Season to all who care to come this way

Mac and PC

2009-12-14T19:10:00.002Z

My images look so different on the Mac I work on, to a PC I viewed them on. On the PC they look grey and dull. So frustrating, because 80 percent of the world has PC's. I wish I could fix this. Or at least understand which is the "real" image. Sigh.

Random moments from a day in the city

2009-12-13T22:14:00.007Z

Part of Durban's public relations for the summer season was to take media on an excursion around some of the lesser known spots of interest in the city. In part, this is as a result of the city beaches being under major construction ahead of next year's Soccer World Cup and in part to kindle an interest in township experiences. For those of you who are not South African, townships refer to large, sprawling and generally poor areas that were home to the black workforce in the apartheid era. Today, they are a mixed bag of poverty and upmarket housing as South Africa moves very slowly towards some form of equality. As such, the experience of being in a township can range from vibrant to depressing, from safe to scary and from poor to very suburban, depending in which part of which township you are in- and when.

Our first stop was Umgababa Beach, once the principal (and almost only) holiday beach you could go to for a vacation in this area if you were black, as only white people were allowed on the beaches close to the city. Today, its tired infrastructure is gradually being repaired, but it has a long way to go. It is gradually losing its apartheid stigma and becoming popular again as a place of choice rather than enforcement.

I focused some of my attention on looking at urban landscapes both here and in Umlazi, a major township to the south of the central city. I'm interested in urban landscapes, free of the pristine natural areas as in traditional outdoor photography, and I am interested in the way landscape takes its form, and hence its visual messaging from the people that inhabit it, exploit it, protect it, destroy it, or whatever choices they make spatially.

The billboard on "whiteness" raises a few eyebrows in a traditionally "black" area, and it is an advertising campaign that has created, with good reason, controversy nationally. The visual messaging with the white sky that almost dissects the image in two says something to me - and it may or may not, to you. This, and one or two of the other images, like the low cost housing - shoebox houses, were shot at speed from a moving bus rather than being carefully planned with tripods. This, is of course, a pity, but sometimes, there is no choice but to seize the moment.

Nikon D300

Late one summer evening

2009-12-08T16:38:00.004Z

A short train ride

2009-12-01T20:25:00.007Z

This little steam train, one of the last of a few survivors of the grand era of rail in South Africa, runs along some hilly countryside to the west of Durban, from Kloof Staion to Inchanga, in the Valley of a 1000 Hills. It's run by a small band of rail enthusiasts who swap their weekday suits for boiler suits and a coal shovel and keep the whole thing going for the love of rail and all things mechanical. The weather was rainy and quite magical on this late November summer afternoon.

I wanted to show that anyone can tell a documentary story through images. You don't have to be a war photographer or document poverty to tell a story. A simple two hour train ride can be filled with material. And you can do it quite well with a family camera, like the Nikon D5000.

Nikon D5000

Community Chest

2009-10-04T18:21:00.010Z

Every year, I do images for the Community Chest, an umbrella charity body in South Africa. It's been an important organisation in South Africa for many years, and it helps a wide variety of institutions and those in need - from the aged to the very young, from people whose bodies are just too old and tired to do what they once did, to those who are mentally challenged. It can be an emotional, yet rewarding job to enter into the lives of people with a camera. Cameras shield us temporarily from emotion, but with some of the images I shot this year, especially kids with autism, it was hard not to feel drained and tired for a few days after the visit.

But I'll let the images do the talking...

Nikon D700

March in July

2009-08-02T21:58:00.008Z

There is something quite unique about covering a protest march. I've done it a good few times, and the emotions are always the same. Most of the marches in Durban end at the City Hall, so one always arrives in that area about a half an hour before the march does. By this time, the streets are blocked off, and for the big marches, like this one, shops close. There is always that weird and eerie silence in the air; no traffic and very few people as office workers scurry inside just in case it turns ugly. It's like that dead calm just before a big storm, a city in near silence.

In the distance, down the street you can just see the marchers but you can't really hear more than a vague and deep droning noise. In front of them the blue lights flashing of numerous police vehicles. As they get closer you can hear the loudspeakers of the march leaders calling slogans and waiting for the people to reply, in one voice. Then the police vehicles dash up the street towards you, sirens on full blast and blue lights everywhere as they scan the approach for any kind of difficulty. It's here!

Then the first wave arrives, ordered together by the marshals in a box-like formation, chanting in a rhythmic way that you can only really experience in Africa. It's alluring and inviting, and for a moment you forget you have a camera in your hand and you almost want to allow yourself to get mesmerised by the sounds and join in. They come wave after wave, and gather in front of the City Hall in their thousands, to listen to their leaders, and chant. Mostly it's peaceful and good natured, sometimes it isn't...

This was part of a 5-day nationwide strike by city workers for better pay. It left a very dirty city, with bins overturned everywhere and litter uncollected. But it was peaceful and mostly good-natured. It felt good to be out in the streets with a camera, ironically feeling free and safe in the middle of a march of thousands.

Nikon D300

End of a day in the City

2009-06-26T15:45:00.002Z

A Dry Season

2009-06-25T18:04:00.006Z

Maybe it was the raging flu, maybe just a reflection of my mood or maybe it just is as it is, but the small towns and farmlands of eastern Free State, South Africa, seemed lonely, poignant and forgotten. Once the heartland of agriculture, I saw a good number of abandoned farms and half-forgotten small towns in this area, just about 100 miles south of the wealthiest city in the nation, Johannesburg.

The roads are scarred and littered with potholes like a wierd skin disease, houses are for sale on every street, and the small village of Edenville has no water; it has to be brought in by big tankers. In the small town of Koppies, what was once a beautiful municipal swimming pool stands deserted and wrecked. It hasn't seen water or the happy sounds of laughing kids for years. It stands opposite the Paradys Hotel (translation : Paradise) which seems far removed from Eden or Paradise.

Small towns are important; they are the engine of rural areas and the nodes and meeting places of once thriving farming communities. I found it sad to see them as I found them, on a winter's day in June 2009.

Comrades Marathon 09 - The race within us

2009-05-26T21:19:00.013Z

The Comrades Marathon is one of the world's great ultra marathons, run between the cities of Durban and Pietermaritzburg annually, a distance of nearly 90 kilometers. The field of some 12 000 runners includes the serious gold medalists and those who are there with friends, office colleagues and club members. The real comradeship of the race is with the ordinary folk, the majority of entrants, helping each other along, giving encouragement just to get there and make one more agonising step closer to the finish line. Some people dress up, others run for a cause or charity, but most run against themselves, not against someone else. It's the ultimate endurance challenge and for some, the toughest personal challenge adopted through one's own free will and the desire to succeed. It's full of joy, laughter, tears, pain, smiles and the support and cheering of complete strangers who come to marvel and wonder why anyone would ever consciously inflict this on themselves. It's a great day that somehow symbolises all our hopes and dreams, personally, and for a greater sense of unity and hope in South Africa, a country with a past characterised by division rather than comradeship and togetherness.

Camera D700

Paradise, South Africa

2009-04-27T21:18:00.002Z

A long day

2009-04-27T21:15:00.003Z

Canon G9

Paris in Red

2009-04-27T21:03:00.002Z

This was taken through a glass pane on the street, nothing added, no manipulation and although it's different to my normal style, I quite like it.

A few European moments

2009-04-07T19:28:00.010Z

I was recently in Berlin for a week and in Paris for less than 8 hours. Although I was in neither place to take pictures, I found the few hours in Paris to be far more productive than the time in Berlin. It must have been one of the first days of spring in the city of romance; the sky turned blue, the air was soft and warm, and the entire city seemed intoxicated with either love or the warm day, or perhaps both. There were lovers everywhere; so nice to see romance in an often visibly turbulent and conflictual world.

In contrast, and while I really liked Berlin, the city and much of the population seemed to languish in the grumpiness of winter. Pointing a camera in anyone's direction generally met with an icy stare and after a while it all seemed like too much effort at public relations to bother to continue. Besides, the camera was big and heavy and possibly intimidating. One really needs a small and good camera for this sort of work. And one that is weatherproof.

In the end, I enjoyed doing some images in the classic black and white style of the street photographer. However, I think it must be much harder to do the sort of work now that people did twenty or more years ago and back into the era of Cartier-Bresson. A post-911 world, security, obsessions with privacy and other issues have placed much more restrictions on photographers when it comes to catching the fleeting moments of a 21st century world fast rushing past to God-knows-where.

Images Nikon D700/Canon Ixus

Love, Powertown shack settlement, Cape

2009-03-01T12:18:00.003Z

It's not just for the young, but the young at heart, no matter where you are.

Final Journeys on exhibition

2009-02-18T20:40:00.005Z

On exhibition in a joint show with photographer Harry Lock at the Fat Tuesday Gallery, Durban, starting Feb 24.

I have always found roadside memorials interesting and sad. Most of us end our lives in a hospital bed or at home; some of us leave this world in more violent or anguished circumstances. But for me, roadside memorials are one of the few places where we share the actual place where someone died, unlike a grave, where we mark someone's final resting place.

In remembering the place that someone died, as we speed past on some highway or byway there is a message - that life is fragile and easily taken from us.

This is an ongoing project and one where I eventually hope to contact the families who are left behind, and do a photographic study.

Unforgiven

2009-02-06T19:16:00.006Z

Contextually, maybe this is better seen in conjunction with "Forgiven" http://peterbendheimphotography.blogspot.com/2008/01/forgiven.html
This man had just robbed a young nurse of her mobile phone, but she didn't get it back. He had already given to an accomplice who had long since fled.

Welome to Egypt : My Egypt.....

2009-01-28T00:24:00.014Z

For many, Egypt is a land of mystery, of ancient pyramids and temples; myth, legend and all sorts of notions of who built the pyramids and their inherent powers.

My personal experience of Egypt, and that which I have documented here is very different. I find the ancient sites interesting to be sure, but I find the people, the hustle and bustle and chaos of the cities - and the ironies of East meets West to be far more fascinating.

So, as a documentary photographer, I chose to concentrate on those aspects, leaving the sites of ancient Egypt to the Egyptologists and to the many books that cover this field with carefully contrived images and illustrations.

In fact, I think those sorts of images are best left to the coffee-table books. They have managed to portray ancient sites in a way that normal visitors don't really get to see. The pyramids, for example, can be such an unpleasant experience in terms of rampant commercialism, 21st century litter and tour buses everywhere, that it's really preferable to buy a postcard. The wonder of it all is somehow lost in the constant hustle and desire of local folk to get you to part with your money. It's decidedly unspiritual.

I was interested in fact in quite the opposite; in portraying what I saw in the glossy pictorial style of the tourism brochures but with a different content, a sense of irony and reality versus myth and legend.

That aside, there are all sorts of interesting ironies in Egypt; the covering up of overt sexuality but the open display of very provocative underwear in many shop window displays, the attitudes towards Western woman derived from B-grade television movies from the US.

Egypt is one of my favourite places. I enjoy the humour that I see in the detail (a coke bottle fragment as the new archaeology of the 21st Century, Italian food at one of the world's more spectacular mosques, for example), the people, the crumbling cities, the order that is in the chaos. Egypt has a faded grandeur that is best seen in images rather than in words, and there is much to discover far from the traditional tourist sites. Just let yourself wander aimlessly around for a while in serendipity. It's a very safe place to do just that. For the adventurous and the observant, Eqypt is a delightful and rewarding place. As a country, it all works; how and why it does is hard to figure out. But it does.

All images Nikon D90, 18-200VR

An interruption

2009-01-11T21:54:00.009Z

This afternoon, as we were innocently washing our cars at our own suburban house, a car with 4 men, two of them armed, pulled up outside and held us up at gunpoint,9 mm revolvers cocked. They tried to force my partner into their car, she resisted, and thank God they let her go. She would have surely been raped; death would have been better for her, she said. They made us cower in the garage while they stole her car, my money..and my Nikon camera and lenses and camera bag, etc.

"We were lucky" as they say in South Africa, for we lived to tell the tale.

But it's not luck. It's a very basic human right to be safe and free. I've just returned from a week in Egypt. In Cairo, where there are some 17 million people, over 4 million of them have zero access to water or sanitation and nearly half live on or below the poverty line. But you can walk around this city 24/7 with everything you own around your neck and no-one will even look twice at you.

I just don't buy this crap about crime and poverty that we get dished up here. I've travelled the world too much and seen plenty poverty. India, for one, comes to mind. You are still safe.

Two weeks ago one of our kids was robbed of his mobile at knifepoint. Just last year we were held up at gunpoint in Johanneburg and my cameras stolen there too. The year before, I was mugged of a camera in central Durban.

Enough! Sure we have great scenery, but what good is that if you are dead? The day my kids finish school, I'm out of this place. It might be a great place one day, but not in my lifetime. And I worry that my lifetime will be a lot shorter here than elsewhere. There are, after all, over 18000 murders a year here.

I find it very hard to take the photographs I used to take. Walking down the street with a camera, even if it's in your bag, puts you at risk. So, wherever you may be, enjoy the freedom you have to look at and walk down the road ahead, not constantly staring over your shoulder.

I normally don't say much on my site, preferring to let the images talk for themselves. But sometimes it's just too hard to remain silent.

Pain Free, Durban, South Africa

2008-12-23T23:18:00.003Z

The Cleaner, Nelson Mandela Square

2008-12-23T22:54:00.001Z

The Ark, Durban

2008-12-23T22:22:00.005Z

(The Ark was a controversial christian shelter in the Point Road area of Durban; a refuge for homeless people. The Ark was closed amidst considerable press debate. This photo essay and article was published in Camera and Image Magazine, Dec 08/Jan 09 issue)

The evolution of landscape in photography
Reflections on landscape and a photo essay

The landscape is a recurring theme in art over the centuries, and in the more recent medium of photography, that also holds true.

But like all creative expression, be it in literature, painting or photography, ideas move on, evolve and shift. They do so partly because the world around us has changed, and partly because our consciousness of that world has altered. If one looks at the expansive English landscape paintings of the 18th and 19th Century, they expressed a form of grand idealism about the world, firmly based in the creator and creation, sylvan in their depiction of world. Green fields, pastoral scenes; the golden glow of a perfect landscape; canvasses that are almost heaven on earth.

In a similar vein, photography in the earlier part of the 20th Century developed along similar themes, and these themes still endure today in many forms. Consider, for example, the work of Ansel Adams – those beautiful landscapes that celebrate the romantic vision of a virgin American West. In many of his images of Yosemite, taken in large format in black and white, the lighting and composition reinforces the essences of the Great American Dream; a pioneering affinity with the outdoors and the creator.

The romantic landscape endures today, and it evokes strong feelings in all photographers, even if those emotions are sub-conscious. I don’t think there is a photographer who hasn’t, at least once, been able to resist the compelling attracting of a golden sunset or the reflections of trees in the water of a perfectly still morning lake. There are thousands of offices and homes adorned with wall calendars depicting perfect scenes bathed in idyllic light to uplift us from our dull desks and piles of papers. As a youngster, I remember my relatives keeping chocolate boxes with alpine and lakeside scenes to store the sewing kit in – a visual break to remind one of how life might be if one wasn’t sewing on buttons or darning socks.

While those photographs are pretty and romantic, many photographers in the latter part of the twentieth century began to question their relevance to the world most of us actually live in. It’s one thing to construct and present this perfect world, and another to find that when we frame the image, we have to duck to avoid the electricity pylons in our viewfinder, or move a little to the left to dodge a factory or cluster housing estate. And then, there is always Photoshop to correct those blemishes on the landscape in a digital era.

The fundamental shift in landscape photography came about when a number of photographers started recognising that we live in a world that has been altered by man; that it is almost impossible to go anywhere and find the unspoiled idealistic romantic environment that earlier artists so tenaciously clung onto. In the 1970’s photographer Stephen Shore published a groundbreaking book called “Uncommon Places”. In “Uncommon Places”, Shore shows a very different set of American landscapes to those of Ansel Adams. They are images of small towns in America, detailed photographs of supermarket parking lots, shop fronts, housing estates; natural scenes all imprinted with the influence of man and the cultural landscape on the natural landscape.

Shore calls this “conscious attention” “It is,” he says ”a condition of seeing the world in a heightened state of awareness. I think most people have walked down the street and for a few minutes everything looks brighter or more vivid, or space and time feels more tangible; things seem more real.”

Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joel Sternfeld and William Eggleston are all great photographers who revolutionised the medium in the latter part of the 20th Century with similar approached to the medium. Photographers such as Robert Polidori have also created wonderful landscapes in his books on Havana and ruins of Chernobyl.

I can distinctly remember when I first saw these images in a 1977 Time-Life Photography Yearbook so substantial was the impression they made on me. In the world of art and photography, however, that was three decades ago, and there has been substantial evolution since then. On one end of the scale, recent landscape photography has been concerned with realism in everyday life, on the other, the manipulation of imagery that has become so much easier with the digital age has allowed the construction of completely imaginary and fabricated landscapes.

Realism versus fabrication is a whole moral and ethical debate in photography, but that’s a debate we can pursue in the future……

The traces we leave behind…..

“…these old buildings are about to undergo a construction metamorphosis that will see the Point Waterfront area become home to a brand-new brick and glass shopping centre topped by modern offices and serviced by undercover parking.”
From Property24.com, 2006

Cities are continually changing and evolving, with parts of them destructing and reconstructing. Like most of life, they never reach a stage of completion, as does a baked cake. As cities and the buildings within them evolve organically, they leave traces of their former uses behind. Sometimes those uses are memorised in whatever new use the building is put to. The form is retained but the use changes, as in the case of an old warehouse that becomes a shopping mall.

I’ve been fascinated by the traces of people that once occupied spaces that are now abandoned and awaiting transformation, in part because those traces are fleeting, and I wanted to record them as urban landscapes in a documentary way.

These images were taken at a shelter, known as the Ark and located in a former barracks for stevedores in Durban’s once notorious Point Area. Run as a Christian mission, it provided shelter for homeless and destitute and desperate people. It was, over the years, shrouded in controversy, but remained a landmark in Durban for the urban poor. When the city redeveloped the Point area into a modern precinct of luxury apartments and office blocks, the Ark residents were served with an eviction order. Plans to move the residents to an area in Montclair, a residential community, were met with considerable resistance from residents. In the end, and after all the debate, the residents of the Ark were dispersed across the city, some even ending up in Cape Town. They were never moved en masse to a new location.

The promised new shopping and office mall complete with wine bars, restaurant and exhibition space was supposed to have been constructed by the end of 2007. At the time of writing most of the internal fittings have been removed by demolishers; little else seems to have taken place.

Despite this building having been in the hands of the demolishers, I’m amazed at how many traces of its emotional content has been left behind. Slogans on the wall testify to the occupants recording of their religious beliefs on walls that once towered above beds, old cards and posters have been faithfully photographed exactly where I found them, and signs of human habitation are still to be found in the small detail and in the spaces people once occupied. Plants and weeds grow through the rubble, testament to the power of nature to finally re-conquer all that man builds.

Whatever is built there will also have a lifecycle, and an end date. No matter how bright the chrome, or shiny the glass, it too will in years to come, be a pile of rubble, and a collection of memories, both good and bad, for the people that occupied and used it.

Going Home

2008-10-29T20:06:00.000Z

Wildebeest on the move, Umzolozolo at Nambiti Reserve, South Africa

Wings #1 and #2

2008-08-28T20:42:00.002Z

Take Away, Albert Park, Durban

2008-08-28T20:38:00.000Z

Do not Disturb

2008-08-28T18:58:00.003Z

Girl with painted hot pants

2008-08-28T18:55:00.003Z

At Durban's Sexpo, an exhibition devoted to all things sexual...

Life's a Beach

2008-08-28T09:55:00.006Z

As published in the portfolio "Life's a Beach" in the September issue of Camera and Image Magazine.

An evening in Africa

2008-08-28T09:26:00.004Z

The Man With Balls, Durban 2008

2008-07-09T22:04:00.000Z

The Sangomas (Witchdoctors)

2008-07-09T21:56:00.003Z

Self Portrait - Father and son

2008-07-09T21:49:00.001Z

Cresta Shopping Mall, Johannesburg, SA

2008-07-09T21:46:00.001Z

Restaurant in late Autumn

2008-07-09T21:40:00.002Z

21.08.06

2008-05-18T08:56:00.005Z

Last week

2008-05-18T08:43:00.004Z

Playground

2008-05-09T00:48:00.002Z

At the Beach

2008-05-08T23:50:00.001Z

Amongst Birds

2008-05-08T23:38:00.002Z

The Birthday Party

2008-05-08T23:35:00.001Z

Men at Work

2008-05-08T23:32:00.001Z

Mobility

2008-04-18T08:11:00.003Z

At Mandela's statue, Sandton, Johannesburg

2008-04-18T07:59:00.006Z

At Nelson Mandela's giant statue in Sandton Square, a white dove is a symbol of peace.
Camera Nikon D60

some chairs #1 to #11

2008-02-19T23:58:00.005Z

#2010

2008-01-26T21:43:00.000Z

Shoes, city centre, Durban

2008-01-26T00:41:00.001Z

Forgiven

2008-01-26T00:26:00.001Z

Everywhere you go

2007-10-18T17:57:00.000Z

Untitled #1

2007-10-18T17:47:00.000Z

The Pool without water

2007-10-18T17:43:00.000Z

Camera Nikon D2X

Beach Culture

2007-10-18T17:27:00.000Z

Camera Nikon D40

The abandoned house, La Mercy, Durban

2007-10-18T16:08:00.000Z

Camera Nikon D50

The end of winter

2007-10-18T16:04:00.000Z

Camera - Panasonic TZ2

The places they lived in

2007-10-16T05:52:00.001Z

In just 3 short months, both my parents-in-law, Pam and Mike Ensor died, with Michael having died yesterday. This post explores the notion of the spaces we leave behind immediately after death, before houses and spaces are cleared, to be sold to a new owner. In between there are those brief moments where the spaces we occupied still remain, untouched and unmoved in, undisturbed.

A brief Passage in India

2007-09-09T22:24:00.000Z

It is said you need a month to visit India and get a taste of it, and probably a lifetime to photograph it. Well, I only was going to be there for four days, and of that, I had a day on a bus and a few hours to capture some of the spirit of this amazing country. The rest of the time was business; meetings and functions.

It's called 'Incredible India' in the marketing material and that is in itself an understatement. Colour, contrasts, incredible poverty and extraordinary wealth. Tradition that is centuries old, modernity that has been borrowed from the West and given its own unique eastern flavour. Stunning colours, rich fabrics, spicy food, delicate beauty and faces lined with poverty.

I focused as much as I could on people to try and capture some of the diversity of some 1 billion people that live here. But the buildings and the small artifacts that are used in everyday life are absorbing and unique in every possible way.

These images are from a half hour while in transit on Juhu Beach in Mumbai and the rest are from Jaipur in Rajahstan. They say that you have to leave behind a pair of shoes in India to be sure that you will return. I was only told about this a few days later, so my shoes all came home with me, but I do hope that I get a chance to visit this incredible place again in my life. These few images taken over a few hours manage, I hope, to capture some of the sense of place that is India.

As is always the case, double-click on any image to get an enlarged view.

All Images Nikon D200, 18-200VR lens

Woman, Central Durban

2007-09-08T15:06:00.001Z

Untitled #1 and #2

2007-09-08T14:59:00.000Z

Springtime at School

2007-08-19T10:10:00.000Z

At the original Gandhi settlement, northern Durban, 2007

Camera Lumix TZ2

The woman whose son died last week

2007-08-19T09:55:00.000Z

At the original Gandhi settlement, northern Durban, 2007

Camera Lumix TZ2

Untitled

2007-08-19T09:51:00.000Z

At the original Gandhi settlement, northern Durban, 2007

Camera Lumix TZ2

Chairs

2007-08-19T09:47:00.000Z

Camera Lumix TZ2

Pointing and Shooting

2007-08-09T22:35:00.000Z

I'm not much of a point and shoot person, finding it difficult to hold that silly little screen at arms length and aim. I prefer the intimacy of a viewfinder, but it's good to have some discipline and explore these things, especially with the Ricoh GR-D and GX100, which have a rangefinder appeal like my old Leica film cameras. Besides, apart from feeling natural and being ergonomically an extension of your arm, the camera you use shouldn't make any difference to the image.

These images are shot in Clairwood, Durban - a now ruined and once proud residential area of Indian origin families that has been allowed to be invaded by industry...as well as at the University of KwaZulu Natal, Westville campus. The dude with lots of metal is a wrestler with the name of Nightmare. I took some portraits of him because I like unusual looking folk...

Images Ricoh GR-D, Ricoh GX100, Fuji F30

Self-portrait

2007-07-28T12:17:00.001Z

Image with Ricoh GR-D

Nelson Mandela turns 89 today

2007-07-18T17:03:00.000Z

Feels like Summer, Durban

2007-06-30T22:12:00.000Z

All images Nikon D40

Child with Umbrella, Durban, 2007

2007-06-19T10:50:00.000Z

And now for some postcards

2007-06-15T06:13:00.000Z

I don't normally do what I term "pretty photographs", preferring gritty urban stuff and social documentary work. Sometimes, that can become a bit mentally oppressive so every now and again, it's probably a good idea to have some pretty postcard images of the beautiful areas around KwaZulu Natal.

Untitled Family

2007-06-14T06:52:00.000Z

Strike nationwide - Day 13

2007-06-13T23:29:00.000Z

The nationwide strike entered its 13th day here, with most schools closed, hospitals under pressure and public transport at a virtual standstill. Before some 10 000 protesters began the long walk up West Street to the Durban's City Hall, the City Centre seemed almost abandoned and disarmingly quiet. So, here are some images of the COSATU march, which was both peaceful and disciplined. Office workers looked out of windows and watched from the street, often with mixed reactions to the demands of the workers for a 12 percent pay hike.

Fragile

2007-06-07T00:31:00.000Z

Portrait of a bored teenager

2007-06-02T21:46:00.000Z

God Bless Africa

2007-06-02T07:11:00.000Z

Untitled #2

2007-06-01T23:19:00.001Z

Canon G7@ISO3200

Day One : Government Workers Strike begins

2007-06-01T23:14:00.000Z

Untitled #1

2007-06-01T22:55:00.000Z

Rough Justice

2007-05-28T19:50:00.001Z

This image shows a thief who has been beaten up and handcuffed to a post in the street outside a large Durban market by the shop owners who caught him. He has been displayed in the public eye as a lesson to other would-be thieves. This image was on display at the Chobi Mela International Festival of Photography 2006 (http://www.chobimela.org/migrations.php) in Bangladesh and at my solo exhibition in Durban as a 2m x 1m print.

Selling Tourism

2007-05-28T18:08:00.001Z

Indaba, the world's 3rd largest Tourist Trade Convention, recently ended in Durban, South Africa - the focus being selling Southern Africa to the rest of the world. There were no shortage of painted faces and other interesting characters at the various exhibitor stands, and clearly the aim is to attract attention, as some of these folk really did. I try to find the humour visually at these events.

Camera Nikon D40/18-200

My Father, 1922-2006

2007-05-27T22:24:00.000Z

Exactly one year today ago my father died, just over a year after my mother. These images are in memory of him. One of them, taken on Valentines Day last year, contains a self-portrait in my father's shaving mirror and is the last image I made of him.

Some Faces in the Crowd

2007-05-27T22:03:00.000Z

Beach Sign

2007-05-25T22:21:00.000Z

Beach landscape, Ramsgate, 2007

Africa Day

2007-05-25T17:10:00.001Z

Today, 25 May 2007, is Africa Day and bright flags flutter in front of Durban's City Hall.

Camera Canon G7

Trouble in Town

2007-05-23T19:25:00.000Z

Street traders - people who sell goods in the streets of Durban protest today against the charges levied on them for trading space. The protest nearly turned ugly as the person to whom they wanted to deliver their petition, the City Manager, was out of town. The situation was finally diffused, but I have to say I felt a bit uncomfortable at the mood of the crowd brandishing sticks, jammed as I was at one stage between the locked doors of the City Hall, and a row of policemen. Photographically, shooting against the sun, with strong whites and dark colours, the results were not ideal. However, sometimes one has to work with what one has.

Whizz-kids

2007-05-22T16:37:00.000Z

Whizz-kids is a care centre for children with distinct needs and disabilities requiring special care. It gets some of its support from the Community Chest, an umbrella charity organisation which channels donations into a vast variety of deserving charities and institutions nationwide. I do some photography for them for which I never charge.
It's quite hard work to photograph kids like this, emotionally hard, rather than physically. Usually when I work with kids they know they are being photographed and are quite keen to be in front of the camera. These children had no idea what I was doing, no interest and no eye-contact. They bob their heads up and down continuously, so capturing emotions and expression is quite challenging.
Fortunately the camera insulates photographers from the real world; we can hide behind the lens. But afterwards, it always hits home. To be sure.

Camera D40

Downtown corner

2007-05-22T06:31:00.000Z

In post-apartheid South Africa, downtown is evolving as a new breed of small business owner finds a place in the urban economy. In some streets, funky ethnic wear, traditional tribal medicines and more have found their way into tiny hole-in-the-wall shops.

Camera Nikon D40

Sorry you are too Tall

2007-05-19T15:56:00.000Z

This image is all about getting older; throughout our lives we reach milestones that mark our ageing. It could be a 50th birthday, a reunion, the day we need to wear glasses....or something as simple as finally being too tall for the funfair.
I'm not good about ageing, and it's often one of my universal photographic themes. In this image I deliberately saturated the colours to be those of youth: over there, just to far away to reach out and touch....

Camera D2X

Sorry you are too Tall, Durban, 2006

Soccer Mom

2007-05-14T01:57:00.000Z

A mother screams at a football referee during a local club match. If you enlarge the image you will notice the lines on the right of the image; travelling saliva (not altered in any way, promise). I'm glad she wasn't my mom! And, it was on Mother's Day!

Anger management, Football Match, Durban

Jewels of the Imagination

2007-05-08T21:09:00.000Z

Sometimes there are some very inspirational moments that go beyond the mere mundane, and photographing the artworks and space at the Umcebo Trust was one of those moments.

The Umcebo Trust (Umcebo is an isiZulu word meaning “treasure”) is a non-profit organization, registered in May 2003. The Trust aims to establish an inclusive studio workspace for people with special needs and other community members, to use and develop their artistic talents as a means of personal and creative development, as well as to generate income for them.

Umcebo is committed to the broader education and the development of skills for people with special needs, but also aims to include those who have various abilities – encouraging contact between all people no matter what their abilities. The idea is for participants to develop mutual understanding and awareness of each other in a mutual exchange of ideas and skills. The trust believes that personal empowerment and improved self-awareness is brought about through art, craft, creativity, learning and teaching.

The Umcebo Trust was established by Robin Opperman, a special needs Art teacher for thirteen years. Robin’s work with school students provided a working model for Umcebo. This work has resulted in a strong working relationship with the community as well as various organizations both here and internationally.*

The work is simply beautiful, imaginative and gleams and glows like a universe of jewels. Made from beads, glass, wood, recycled materials and community donations, it's a tribute to the imagination.

Some of Umcebo's work will be part of the Durban stand at the upcoming Chelsea Flower Show in London.

*Some of this text is from the Trust website www.umcebotrust.co.za

Camera Nikon D40

Street Justice

2007-05-08T20:57:00.000Z

Street Justice, Durban Beachfront area, South Africa

Camera Nikon D40

The Valley

2007-05-07T07:56:00.000Z

The Valley of a Thousand Hills, some 30 kilometers outside Durban is just that; a large area of hills and valleys and winding roads. It's a predominantly poor rural area, a rapidly growing settlement of people on the edge of the City...and where unemployment is in the order of 40 percent. In the centre is the vast Inanda Dam, a potential recreational area.

This image needs to be seen large to really comprehend the detail and variety of the settlements in the valley. Late last year a 12 foot wide image of this was on an exhibition at the Durban Art Museum; I'm not sure if this is an image for small scale viewing. If you click on it, you can see a slightly larger version, though.

Camera Nikon D2X

The Chilli Farmer

2007-05-04T21:56:00.000Z

In northern KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, a Chilli farming project has been undertaken by a group of mostly female farmers working on communal land, operating as a community farming project. It's an innovative self-help scheme in an area riddled with unemployment. I will tell the balance of the story in a future posting. The farmer in this image wears a white clay paste on her face which acts as a natural sunblock against the hot African sun.

Images for a book "Kaelo - Stories of Hope", published by Macmillan

Camera Nikon D2X.

Resting pilgrim

2007-05-02T07:56:00.000Z

Just north of Durban, on the Inanda tourism trail is one of the most important pilgrimage spots for the Shembe, a religion with a large scale following in South Africa. Shembe is form of Christianity, with leaders having prophetic status. Pilgrims come here to ask for blessings, participate in prayers and spend devotional time.

Camera Nikon D40

Small town South Africa; Bela Bela

2007-04-30T21:24:00.000Z

It's a dusty and dry area around the outkirts of Bela-Bela, the town formerly known as Warmbaths to the north of Pretoria, the nation's administrative capital. It's very flat, and very brown and hasn't rained for sometime. The turn-off sign says "Raduim" and not "Radium", presumably named after the radioactive substance, but out here in the middle of nowhere, it's probably unoticed by most. I encounter a dead fox on the roadside; Africa's wild spaces are being inexorably contained.

I'm on my way to a farmhouse some 10 miles outside of Bela-Bela to do an assignment for National Geographic's Traveler magazine, called Trading Places. I'll be with US writer Tom Dunkel who will be staying at the farmhouse of South African based author, David Lambkin, who has in turn gone to Tom's house in Baltimore. Essentially it's a transcontinental house swap and I'm there to cover Tom's experiences of holidaying in someone else's home in Africa. But that's another story that deserves a separate telling, and now that I'm free to use the images, it's something I will relate in time. It will be of interest to photographers who go on assignment.

In the meantime, while covering the assignment, I get a chance to drive into Bela Bela to take some images of the people; to put the story into its African context. The town became famous for its hot springs..and still is. There are also a number of large private game farms all over the area, and one of the richest men in the world, US Billionaire Warren Buffett reportedly owns large game farms in the area. Or so we are told by various townsfolk quite eager to talk to us.

Despite all of this, it's not a pretty town. It could be anywhere in the Midwest US, or the Australian outback. A few dreary streets, some dull and unappealing stores, agricultural supplies, pubs, franchise foods and gas stations. There's not much charm to be found, and it's a strange place for US writer Tom Dunkel to get his first taste of Africa.

My romantic vision of the hot springs themselves was also somewhat shattered. Far from being water bubbling through rocks in a leafy forest pool, the springs turned ot to be a very large swimming bath, in which hundreds of kids romped around gleefully, oblivious to the elusive charms of a more natural setting. There is another hot spring a few miles out of town, and while the setting is quite attractive, the same swimming pool environment is one's only way of sampling the supposedly health-giving waters.

Bela-Bela was, in the apartheid days, known as Warmbaths (in English) and as Warmbad in Afrikaans, a direct translation. Bela-Bela means quite simply "Boiling", refering to the waters. It has no bearing to the Italian for pretty..."Bella", as any visitor to the town would be able to easily confirm.

The township part of the town is quite relaxed, accessible and feels safe. For those of you not familiar with the township concept, I'll explain it simply..and simplistically. In the apartheid days, whites lived in the main part of the town, in the suburbs surrounding the town centre. People of colour lived in dormitory areas outside of the town, close enough for them to provide labour, and far enough away for them to be contained and apart. Although South Africa's democracy is over a decade old, poverty keeps the demographics from changing spatially in any rapid way, and in the small towns, such as Bela-Bela, change is not very apparent at all. In the big cities, it's very different. There is much more integration at the upper ends of society, but the townships still remain (and some Black people will tell you that they prefer living there; the former "white" suburbs are too dull) .

So, here follows a selection of images from a typical small South African town; poor whites, poor blacks, the young, the elderly, those with land and those without. Those with houses that are grand, those with houses smaller than a kid's backyard wendy house.

It could be any small town, anywhere in South Africa.

Cameras Nikon D2X, D50

The Tattoo Man

2007-04-29T23:49:00.000Z

The Tattoo Man, Durban South Africa

Camera Nikon D2H

A little Conversation

2007-04-29T23:43:00.000Z

A little conversation, Warwick Avenue Market, Durban

Camera Nikon D200

Township girl

2007-04-28T07:26:00.000Z

Township Girl, Bela Bela, South Africa

Bela-Bela is a town north of Pretoria famous for its hot springs. Translated, Bela-Bela means Boiling, Boiling - referring to the hot water.

Camera Nikon D50