25 OCTOBER 2009
CITY PRESS
27
BOOKS
EYE ON THE PRIZE T
HE epic span of photographer Alf Kumalo’s life and career is contained in a new photographic memoir entitled Through My Lens. Paging through this 200-plus coffee-table collection of images taken by the legendary lensman, one could be forgiven for thinking that wherever history happened, there was Kumalo, camera in hand, ready to capture the moment. Kumalo, a self-taught photographer, whose love affair with the camera began in the late 1940s and who worked for iconic publications such as Drum and Bantu World in the 1950s, is still a working snapper with no intention of ever retiring. Through My Lens is part biography and part pictorial memoir of a photographer’s journey through some of the most turbulent and defining moments of the 20th century. This collection offers just a sample of a much larger historical catalogue Kumalo has amassed over the five decades he has worked as a photojournalist. Kumalo’s life story is told through pictures he took and through pictures taken of him. Unlike most photojournalists, Kumalo is not shy of being in front of the camera. The collection begins with a prologue entitled The Life and Times of Alf Kumalo, and it could’ve been an alternative title for the collection. Included in this section is a photo of Kumalo in his youth decked out in full Zulu regalia, hamming it up for the camera, and there’s another of the photographer clad in a three-piece suit and hat, striking a pose for a Man about Town series for Drum. The most endearing image is one of his late wife, Jacqueline Poola Kumalo, bathing their daughter Nomfundo in an enamel bowl in 1963. The little girl is looking straight at the camera, covered in soap suds, her face a picture of sheer delight as her mother looks on dotingly. The biographical aspect of this collection also functions to underscore the brutality of the apartheid regime and includes an image taken by Harry Mashabela of Kumalo being roughed up by the cops at a boxing match at Wembley Stadium in Johannesburg in 1976. It is one of many images of police brutality and harassment endured by the tenacious cameraman and which worked, he says, only to cement his
Veteran photojournalist Alf Kumalo’s new photographic memoir bears testimony to the long and successful career of a dogged photographer with an artist’s eye for light and shadows, writes GAIL SMITH
FOR HIS EYES ONLY . . . A picture of Winnie Mandela taken for Madiba in prison
South Africa’s most experienced photojournalists, but Through My Lens illustrates that he was also an international jet-setter whose passion for images and people took him to where the action was. Even during times of severe and often arbitrary travel restrictions placed on politically active black South Africans. His early work quickly earned him a reputation as a political photographer and made him the focus of intense scrutiny and persecution by a system intent on preventing images of apartheid brutality seeing the light of day. Kumalo was arrested during the ’76 Soweto uprising and pistolwhipped by police. The case dragged on for a year and he was given a three year suspended sentence and told not to take pictures any more. He defied that and picked up his camera as soon as he walked out of court. He took many of the iconic images of Nelson Mandela and the Rivonia trialists, some of which are contained in this collection. Kumalo’s closeness to Winnie and Nelson Mandela meant he was perfectly placed to capture rare images of intimacy and family life. His relation-
THE GREATEST . . . Khumalo and Muhammad Ali before a fight at Madison Square Gardens in New York in 1977
determination to document his world and its harsh realities. “I can’t count how many times during apartheid I was harassed by the police, beaten, arrested or just roughed up. The more often it happened, the less I was afraid,” says Kumalo, whose skull got cracked in one particularly brutal encounter with the old South African police force. Kumalo is best known as one of
ship with the Mandelas continued after Madiba was imprisoned and one close-up image of daughter Zenani as a little girl – with a single tear rolling down her cheek watching her mother fly off to visit her father for the first time on Robben Island – bears testimony to the immense trauma suffered by this family. Kumalo dedicates an entire chapter to Winnie and includes images shot exclusively for her
imprisoned husband. But this is also a book of love and laughter that charts our country’s history from the days of unimaginable darkness and despair to an era of hope and joy. The images that best capture the elation of freedom are a series taken at Mandela’s home in Soweto shortly after his release and depicts the reunion of Leah and Desmond Tutu, Mandela and Walter Sisulu. These close-ups of unbridled joy and hilarity are rendered poignant by the many preceding images of this group of stalwarts, who gave their best years to the fight against apartheid. Kumalo travelled extensively during his career. Travel is a unifying metaphor throughout this collection which charts his journey to many destinations including London, Kinshasa, Lesotho and the United States. He travelled to Zaire in 1974 for the fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, but nearly didn’t make it after getting arrested for three days in Zambia, being refused entry into Kenya, getting sent back to Zambia and then back to South Africa, where he had to start all over again. Kumalo eventually landed in Kinshasa four hours before the Rumble
in the Jungle began. Through My Lens includes a chapter on Ali, which documents not only his legendary prowess in the ring, but also the close friendship that developed between him and Kumalo after they met in London in the late 70s. In one photograph Ali strokes Kumalo’s head and in another Ali sits eating ice cream in his bedroom in Chicago. He dedicates an entire chapter to artists he photographed in exile such as Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Caiphus Semenya and Letta Mbulu. And also of Winston Mankunku Ngozi taking a break while recording Yakhalínkomo in 1968, of pianist Gideon Nxumalo with eyes closed, one hand holding a cigarette another playing the piano, and of Kippie Moeketsi, Stan Getz and Alan Kwela rehearsing, as well as an image of lesser-known
artists such as Alfred Maqubela, Sydney Khumalo and Ephrahim Ngatane on the streets of Pimville in the 70s. But it is an image right upfront, taken of artists Dumile Feni and Julian Bahula in London, also in the early 70s, which is one of the most poignant images in the entire collection. In the wide-angle shot, Feni sits on a mattress surrounded by vast canvases of his art, looking pensive and dishevelled, his face speaks volumes of the pain of exile and he seems almost oblivious to both Bahula and Kumalo. Feni left South Africa in 1968 and died in New York before South Africa was liberated. But Kumalo didn’t just chronicle the rich and famous, brutality and oppression, he also photographed ordinary people. And it is these images that bring levity to a collection that could otherwise have been a se-
STILL GOING STRONG . . . Alf Kumalo at his Photographic Museum in Diepkloof Picture: Ruth Motau
ORDINARY PEOPLE . . . A couple at Newmarket Racecourse in Alberton in the 60s
ARTISTRY AND EXILE . . . Dumile Feni and Julian Bahula in London
rious buzz-kill. Photographs such as an Evaton man bowing down in prayer at the announcement of Mandela’s release from prison, of a little girl with a dog on her back wrapped like a baby, of a beautiful group of women smiling and chatting outside the Rivonia Trial and staff riders on a train in the 70s, all illustrate the point that life went on in spite of oppression, hardship and pain. This collection of images, with text by journalist Tanya Farber, is a testimony to the long and successful career of a dogged photographer with an artist’s eye for light and shadows. It charts the tears and triumphs of a nation, the unbowed spirit of a defiant people, of innocence and optimism, of heroes and heroines both known and unknown. ) Through My Lens: A Photographic Memoir is published by Tafelberg