FOR ALL
Muslim Views . September 2014
39
George Hallett, photographer Photographers are artists that play and shout with light and shadow, shape and composition, colour and darkness, writes Doctor M C D’ARCY.
OURMET banquets for the flesh often satisfy for the moment; feasts for the mind and spirit can delight forever. And, what a delectable feast I enjoyed recently, savouring the exquisite fare of George Hallett’s photographic lifework in the National Iziko Art Museum, in Cape Town. People’s photographer and son of District Six, Cape Town, George Hallet’s retrospective of the life and history of South Africa’s past, essayed the tragic history of disadvantaged people being trodden in the mud by racial bigotry. But counterpoint, it also sang of music and triumph in the course of struggle for freedom of body and soul. His travels across the globe delicately flavoured the exhibition with nuanced photos of forgotten ex-pats, academics, artisans and artists who fled apartheid’s yoke. His rendering of foreign climes, particularly of the French and British countrysides, added moody melanges to the photographic dialogue. Photographers are artists that play and shout with light and shadow, shape and composition, colour and darkness. They graphically record the searing, violent aspects of life, and deftly paint the tranquillity of soft mystic scenes. Some are sloggers of the mediocre, producing forever the same clothed in varied dross; others have genius etched in their genes and are born to see what others are blind to. ‘I try to capture the essence of the scene; that is the guiding light of my work,’ said George Hallett. And that is what photographic brilliance is all about. George Hallett was born on December 30, 1942, in District Six. A victim of family discord, he spent much of his youth in Hout Bay, lovingly raised by his grandparents. ‘South Peninsula High School’s English teacher, the famed writer, Richard Rive, taught me to read. He said, ‘All those who read become somebodies.”’ Rive introduced him to artists and writers of the Afrikaner Sestige creative era of the 1960s.
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He mixed with South African luminaries such as Jan Rabie, Uys Krige and the late poet, writer and artist of Simonstown and Ocean View, Peter Clark. Clark entertained him with a Mozart concerto on flute and topped it with succulent fare, reminding him that ‘the Clarks don’t cook, they create dishes’. George’s exhibition-photograph of one half of Peter Clark’s face with a cow-bell dangling next to it is surreally brilliant. I wrote a column in Arts for All on Peter Clark last year. Sadly, he recently died just as his paintings began to fetch high prices on auction. Poet and former writer for Muslim News during the 1960s and ’70s, James Mathews, became a life-long friend and mentor. In many ways he had a great influence on George’s life. George’s stunning photograph of James Mathews rising from dark murky waters into the sunshine, much like King Neptune erupting from the deep-blue sea, echoes that bond. When the apartheid destruction of District Six was imminent, James urged George: ‘Go and record what is left of District Six; it is a vital part of our history.’ George did just that, capturing the essence of the subject like no other. Why? Simply because he was of District Six’s unique life-earth and infectious humour. Notwithstanding his sharp wit and frivolity, George is deeply spiritual. He says: ‘As a child I saw dead people.’ In the 1960s he was stabbed twice in the chest and saved from death by the business cards in his breast pocket. Genius never starts at the top; ten thousand hours of practice is the secret to its flourishing. During the mid-sixties, George did his stint as a street photographer in Darling Street, Cape Town, photographing movie-snap pictures of Cape Town’s denizens scurrying along the pavements to the city centre. The quick photographing technique played a significant part in shaping George’s later career. Photographer, Kariem Haliem, of Palm Street Studios in upper Darling Street, District Six, also had a paternal hand on George as a budding photographer. Studio work, wedding pictures and sundry slogging at diverse
meetings and festive gatherings ended in developing and printing a rich fare of evocative black and white photographs. George delighted in the studio’s darkroom-lab magic; it was there that one could see one’s work coming to life in the developing and printing trays, crucial training of the eye for field-work. As an aside, Cape Town was once the home of Sir John Herschel, the famous astronomer and discoverer of the planet Uranus. He was a philosopher, botanist, astronomer, polymath as well as one of the many ‘discoverers’ of the science of photography. In 1819, he had discovered how to fix images on plates using sodium thiosulphate (hypo). This was a crucial step, and is still used in black and white photography. He coined the terms photography, photographic emulsion, positives and negatives. He came to Cape Town in 1834 to study the 1835 appearance of Halley’s Comet with a small telescope in his garden sited in the current Claremont area. Interestingly, he met Charles Darwin, of Natural Selection in Evolution fame, at the Cape when Darwin docked here on his circumnavigation with the ship, Beagle. Herschel School is named after John Herschel. Like his illustrious predecessor, George Hallett currently lives in the Claremont area. George’s photography is unique. He worked, and still works, with one camera and one lens. The camera is often hidden by his jacket so that he can flip it open, take a candid shot, and the camera vanishes before the subject realises that a photograph has been taken. He still works with 35mm film. ‘It is still the best for high definition pictures.’ In this way he is up there with the great French candid-photographer, Cartier-Bresson, famed for the spontaneous pictures of everyday life. His portraits are in the league of the Canadian-Lebanese Yusuf Karsh and his brilliant portraitessays. In 1970, George left for London and worked for the prestigious Times Higher Education Supplement. The iconic Times only settled for the very best. They said: ‘We love your work because of how you see the world.’
George Hallett pictured at one of his iconic Madiba photographs when he honoured a group of U3A members with a guided tour through his exhibition. The photograph featured on the cover of his book Images of Change. Photo M C D’ARCY
This led to him being awarded the prestigious Hasselblad Award for good photography. In Britain, he photographed many of the political exiles and artists who later played key roles in shaping the new South Africa. 1994 saw him busy in France. In 1981, he travelled extensively, lensing in Zimbabwe (where he was beaten up by the police in front of Moleketsi Mbeki during a photojournalist shoot), USA, Amsterdam, Japan and the Cameroons in Central Africa. After 1990 he returned to South Africa to photograph and teach. George was closely associated with the pictures of President Mandela’s release and recording of his early years as president. His archives bristle with some ‘staged-candid’ pictures of Madiba in which he directed the icon how to pose without evidently posing. His picture of Mandela meeting one of his daughters for the first time is brilliant. George Hallett also recorded some of the most searing moments of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s (TRC) unravelling of South Africa’s heinous past. On the night of January 8, 1978, a muffled sound came through the window of philosopher and antiapartheid activist Dr Rick Turner’s Durban home. He fell dead in the arms of his young daughter, Jann. George Hallett’s picture of Jann looking down at the icy Eugene de Kock (known as Prime Evil) taken during the TRC will forever linger in my mind. The University of the Third Age (U3A) is a group of senior citizens of all racial groups and with no par-
ticular educational level that come together to make the life of senior citizens meaningful, educational and entertaining. On a cold afternoon, a small number of Athlone’s U3A met George Hallett on the steps of the Iziko National Art Gallery for a short dialogue with the photographer to take us through the exhibition. George entertained us royally with consummate insouciance, rollicking humour, punctuated with delicious spicy stories. The diverse group could relate to many of the people and places in the photos. Laughter rang through the halls. The session lasted more than two hours of fun, humour and appreciation for the work of the artist as he took us through the exhibition. I met George Hallett many years ago at the residence of Mrs Abdea de Costa of Bokaap. She was most interested in establishing a centre in Bokaap to preserve and house the historic documents of the disadvantaged communities of Cape Town. It was at that tea that George took an iconic picture of her husband, Hajji Sulaiman de Costa, reading the Quran; it was truly sublime. I remember his collection of striking pictures of Bokaap and particularly of a flock of pigeons in flight, a statement reminiscent of the flight of Cape Town’s disadvantaged from the apartheid cleansed group areas. I shall remember forever his collection of pictures exhibited recently in the Iziko National Art gallery. It was a defined tribute to a great artist that captured history in light and shadows.
Muslim Views