Ijusi#23

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COVER: eThembeni Cemetery, near Mvoti Toll Plaza, Groutville KZN. 9 July 2006 Photographers suffer for their art. Garth Walker, assisted by Steve Kotze documenting Sacred Places of KwaZulu-Natal.

STEVE KOTZE © 2006

Andrew Verster, untitled colour photograph, 26 December 1989

UNPUBLISHE D COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHY FROM SOUTH AFRICA CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Roger Ballen Paul Botes Angela Buckland David Goldblatt Patrick Gries Pieter Hugo Roger Jardine Chris Kirchhoff Steve Kotze Oliver Kruger Wilhelm Krüger Jillian Lochner Blake Pickering Patrick Ryan Lance Slabbert Mikhael Subotzky Guy Tillim Garth Walker

issue #23 : 2006 Published now and then by Orange Juice Design Durban South Africa as part of our ongoing commitment to excellence in South African graphic design “i-jusi” ( ie-juice-ie ) roughly translated as "juice" in isiZulu Publisher Garth Walker: Orange Juice Design Editorial Office P O Box 51289 Musgrave Road 4062 KwaZulu-Natal South Africa www.ijusi.com

I-JUSI wishes to acknowledge the generosity and commitment of Fishwicks The Printers Sappi Fine Paper in promoting South African graphic design

Printed on Avalon Silk 115gsm – a Triple Green Product from Sappi

COPYRIGHT © Orange Juice Design 2006 • Reproduction in whole or in part of any contents of i-jusi without prior written permission from the publisher is strictly prohibited. The publisher does not accept responsibility for images or statements expressed by contributors.

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So Wrong

By Sean O’Toole This, more or less, is how it happened. A while back now, Jan, a second-hand anything dealer I know in Pretoria, called saying he had some photos I should see, oddities he had picked up while riffling through the contents of a deceased estate. Two weeks later, after an infuriating midweek trip to Pretoria along the Ben Schoeman, I finally met up with Jan, and through him Andrew Verster, albeit through his photographs.

Not Andrew Verster the Durban artist, although I still occasionally chuckle at the odd coincidence. Judging from the photographs in the box, inscribed with the name “Andrew Verster” in a black permanent marker, the deceased man must have been an architect or building engineer, at minimum a functionary in that city’s extended network of bureaucracy.

I suspect the latter, a theory supported by what follows.

Most of the pictures in the shoebox were postcard sized architectural photographs, boring if formally accomplished studies of post-war urban architecture, the kind of modernist stuff that seems to predominate the urban landscape in Pretoria. Picture David Goldblatt’s 1983 photograph of the Gereformeerde Kerk in Totiusdal – a suburb of Pretoria – but deduct the sense of wonder and existential inquiry that frames all his Structures images. Anyway, I was able to identify quite a few of the buildings in that shoebox: the College of Nursing, near the zoo, the photographer obviously struggling to make sense of the elevated lecture hall appendaged to its linear geometry; also the Meat Board Building, Transvaal Provincial Administration Building and Munitoria, where my grandfather once worked as a building inspector.

Generally though, the photos were quaintly alien; I suspect this is partly the outcome of time, the way the visible world reconstructs itself, memory (and photography) a counterpoint to all this change. Amongst the photographs falling into this latter category – the alien – was a deadpan series of photographs of schools and post offices, also a handful of aerial views of ISCOR, the photos pungent with the ironworks’ primitive industrialism. These elevated views were exceptional, most of the pictures in the shoebox offering declaratory frontal views. This extended to three minutely dissimilar photographs, each identically captioned: “Native housing – Mamelodi”.

It was however a makeshift photo album that accompanied the shoebox that really held my attention. Unlike the random photos I have described, essentially the material flotsam of a life, the tatty book offered something more, a peep over the fence into the life of Andrew Verster. It was a story told from a single, unchanging perspective.

Filling each page of the hardbound scrapbook were identical photos of a suburban swimming pool. That’s it. An immovable view of a boring pool, the paved suburban vista circumscribed by shrubbery and walls. The series somehow reminded me of Ed Ruscha, the American painter who in the late 1960s produced a series of photographs titled Nine Swimming Pools. Unlike Ruscha, who in the mould of August Sander and eccentric German couple Bernhard and Hilla Becher set out to make an affecting study of difference, using sameness as his template, the photos in the scrapbook demonstrated an entirely different sense of purpose. Denial, the counterpoint of evidence, probably best sums up the idea behind these pool photographs. Let me clarify.

Accompanying each of the recurring photographs was a detailed caption, or better yet a verbal non sequitur that somehow coded their reading. Here is an example, also the first entry in this accidental visual diary: “Annita left today. I miss her. Queenswood, Pretoria, 28 July, 1975. 4.39pm.” That’s all, a terse statement completely bereft of context, totally uninterested in the tranquil silence of the pool. It was utterly compelling. Who was Annita? A wife, a lover, a sister? Did she die? Did the Versters get divorced? The cryptic statements accompanying the 57 duplicate pictures never answered these questions. This is because the sentences, written in a formal cursive, never cohered as a totalising narrative. They just were. Separate. Distinct. Apart.

Here is another example of Andrew Verster’s blankly descriptive verse. “The bus broke down on Soutpansberg Road. I walked home. 11 May 1979, 5.25pm.” On occasion, his words did achieve something more than just a bland recording of fact. “I found the Rock Pigeons’ nest. Two eggs, ‘glossy white’ as C.D. Priest describes them in his book.

They look so frail. 12 February, 1991. 6.59am.”

One of the more intriguing things about the photo collection, particularly when you consider that it was made in a dormitory suburb northeast of Pretoria’s city centre, is the total absence of human life. Only once, in a picture dated 26 December 1989, do you catch a glimpse of what looks like a cat jumping out of the frame in the foreground. For the rest, the book, which starts inexplicably at a determined time in 1975 and equally mysteriously ends 22 years later, offers a quiet portrait of nothingness. Fuck all. “The crack of thunder is beautiful, the smell of rain in the air intense. I’ll probably have to sweep the pool afterwards. 5 November, 1997. 3.43pm.” There it ends.

As an afterthought, I should mention that the book has been the launch vehicle for some rather amateurish theorising. At risk of alienating the already bored, I’ll keep my insights brief. Despite their narrative quality, photographs don’t speak; they are spoken on behalf of. It is something fundamental to their history, particularly as visual objects, and more pointedly as editorial devices used to illustrate an already visible world. To write about photography then, to speak on behalf of something that is already communicating, albeit non-verbally, is an anxious task. It is fraught because, to cull a phrase from Roland Barthes, it is also “literally impossible”. I think Andrew Verster realised this the very moment he decided to record, both photographically and verbally, the weird transcendental state he always underwent in his back garden. Of course, I could be wrong, but then that is the essential beauty of writing about photography. Being wrong.

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Paul Botes

Margaret Achiro Margaret Achiro, along with 2 friends, was attacked and raped by the LRA. Whilst her friends were killed, she was spared due to her being 8 months pregnant and in order to serve as an example. Told by the LRA to warn villagers of the rebel’s approach, she was found with lips and ear severed and taken to a clinic by a passerby. Returning home she was rejected by her husband and eventually made her way to the Children of War Centre, run by Child Vision.

PAUL BOTES Š 2006

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David Goldblatt

Entrance t o Willowmore, Eastern Cape, 14 January 2006 DAVID GOLDBLATT Š 2006

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Pieter Hugo

Mohamed Bah, Monrovia, Liberia. 2006 The worldwide movement of Boy Scouts is associated with a peaceful civil society, not a country that has just survived fifteen years of civil war and whose previous president, Charles Taylor, is to be tried for war crimes. In this context, children in uniforms invariably suggest child soldiers, and yet these Boy Scouts in dapper uniforms are practicing the scout motto ‘Be prepared’ and the Scout slogan ‘Do a good turn daily’. Their uniforms are made up of second-hand uniforms donated by Boy Scout groups in more affluent countries, and although the uniforms are often the wrong size and come with existing badges, they are worn with pride and honour.

PIETER HUGO © 2006

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Guy Tillim

Supporters of Jean-Pierre Bemba line the road as he walks to a rally from the airport. Kinshasa. DRC. 27 July 2006 GUY TILLIM Š 2006

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