BORN FREE? A survey of the Market Photo Workshop

BORN

An exploration of the Market Photo Workshop

Founded in 1989 by internationally renowned South African photographer David Goldblatt, the Market Photo Workshop is principally a training ground designed to provide visual literacy and technical skills to emerging photographers excluded from previously designated ‘white’ art schools and training institutions. By giving access to image making practices to those who are usually represented by others, the Market Photo Workshop challenges the mainstream photographic coverage of black and mixed-race South African communities. Located in Newtown in Johannesburg city centre, the institution started with informal training on documentary photography in the rehearsal rooms of the anti-Apartheid Market Theatre, before moving to the old Newtown post offi ce, where a darkroom was installed. In the 2000s, it relocated so as to incorporate computer rooms and gallery spaces. The Market Photo Workshop’s infrastructures, mentorship programmes and curriculum, including the Foundation course, the Intermediate course, the Advanced Photography Programme and the Documentary Photography Programme, were designed in response to changes in the practice and subjects of photography. One of the most defi ning moments in the development of the school was the fi rst South African democratic elections in 1994, which were accompanied by the lift of cultural boycotts, South African reconnection with a global economy and the international art market, the development of the internet and new technologies. The notion of an ‘identity’ focused decade in the 2000s has commonly been used to describe works by photographers questioning their place, affi liations and belonging in this ‘new’ South Africa. Market Photo Workshop’s alumni including Jodi Bieber, Zanele Muholi, Nontsikelelo Veleko

FREE?

Words JULIE BONZON

and Sabelo Mlangeni have photographically refl ected on socio-political barriers and changes in the country since the formal end of Apartheid. The next generation of students coming from the Market Photo Workshop, such as Musa N Nxumalo, Matt Kay, Lebohang Kganye, Sipho Gongxeka, Phumzile Khanyile and Tshepiso Mazibuko have contributed to local and international photography debates surrounding notions of identity and representation through portraiture. Born shortly before or after the fi rst democratic elections, some of these students have been affi liated with the ‘born free’ discussion. ‘Born frees’ gained visibility during the 2014 elections and especially after the #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall movements. Through collective actions and strikes, the young generation demonstrated its political and historical awareness by calling into question memory, nation and (de)colonised identity. The terminology ‘born free’ should be used cautiously, however, as it tends to over-generalise political affi liations. Nevertheless, the expectations inherent to the assertion of freedom have given rise to various oppositions. Incoherence between the government’s promises and everyday struggles led the new generation to voice their concerns in the public and online domains. While their parents witnessed tangible progress, young people are now uncertain of what remains possible in a country where the legacy of struggle is more apparent than direct experience of confl ict. Young activists reference fi gures from the past or from elsewhere to question their present moment and place in this country. In the ‘born free’ debate, and in the photographic project of the Workshop’s students discussed in this piece, youth, identity and belonging appear as key and confl icting notions.

Musa Nxumalo, a student at the Market Photo Workshop between 2006 and 2008, is primarily known for his photographic series Alternative-Kidz, representing a community of young black South Africans immersed in rock music and punk culture. Alternating self-portraits with sceneries from Soweto nightclubs, Nxumalo’s photographs break with the stereotypical understanding of ‘punk’ as solely European and North American-based and fed. He elaborated his series with the wish to explore what ‘subculture’ represents in contemporary South Africa. Photographing everyday practices of self-fashioning, Nxumalo witnesses the impact that the consumption of commodities has on shaping contemporary subjectivities. In this series, Nxumalo acknowledges the agency of young South Africans to engage with complex and fl uid systems of representation, both locally and globally.

JULIE BONZON How did the Alternative Kidz series start? Why have you decided to focus on this specific subject? MUSA N. NXUMALO It was very close to me, it was very personal. I worked in different places, but mostly where my friends lived, in the East Rand and in Soweto. I would photograph my friends in their own personal spaces. As my work developed, I started photographing at festivals and in clubs. I started mixing up with other people, not only close friends, but people who would have the same ideas about music, about culture. I wasn’t interested in the classical subjects of documentary photography. I wanted to photograph fashion, rock and roll… I wanted to document youth culture, and I wanted my work to feel like it. JB It seems that there is a clear difference between the photojournalistic, black and white photographs of protest, and your photos. MN My pictures are more ‘trashy’, that’s how I consider them, or that’s what I’ve always aimed to achieve. I don’t follow the formal rules of photography. As I grew as an artist, I started using a point-and-shoot camera, and I would be on the dancefloor, dancing and photographing at the same time. They are trashy snapshots in an conscious way, trashy as if I am giving the images an attitude. JB Could you tell me more about music and fashion in Alternative Kidz? MN We used to listen to a lot of alternative music, especially Bloc Party, and we listened to hip hop, anything that would be alternative to music that typically played in the township at the time, like kwaito and house music. This was related to the idea of being young and wanting to be different. Music was accompanied by fashion. Around 2005–2006, very skinny jeans were not meant to be worn by heterosexual guys. We would dress up in very tight jeans, dirty fake Converse sneakers, paint our nails with black nail polish, stretched our earlobes — break boundaries. JB Can an alternative identity be shaped through mass media tastes? MN Yes, I guess, when you are hungry for something different to what you are always bombarded with, you are most likely to rebel against it. I wanted a different image to what you would typically see in everyday media, and I didn’t care whether or not I would get published or hired for photography gigs. JB What do you think of the term ‘born free’ today? MN It has a different meaning for different people. For me, I think it means exactly what I did with Alternative Kidz. Young black people are still struggling, however, in terms of thinking, the mind — the idea of being ‘born free’ makes sense. I was born in 1986, so I am not really ‘born free’, but I make choices about what I want to do with my life, to become an artist when it feels alright, and work a nine-to-five job when I need to. I guess I have been privileged enough to be an artist, and at some point in 2017, I wanted to work for a commercial art gallery, to curate exhibitions and art fairs, and that’s what I am doing. I guess you can say I am a ‘born free’ because of these opportunities.

Born in 1989, Sipho Gongxeka studied at the Market Photo Workshop between 2011 and 2013. He developed his series Skeem’ Saka (a vernacular term meaning ‘brotherhood’, ‘sisterhood’ or ‘friendship’) in collaboration with photographer Pieter Hugo. Skeem’ Saka is a photographic series mainly focused on Soweto-based South African men. The gangster is the cinematic character addressed by each portrait, oscillating between the visual tropes of fashion and documentary photography while revealing the performance of a certain type of masculinity enacted in Soweto. At the beginning of the project, the protagonists were photographed in a series of stereotypical actions: hiding, smoking, drinking alcohol; sometimes they were depicted covered in blood. Gongxeka decided to focus on the theme of gangsterism, but to tone down and interrogate its visual rhetoric.

JULIE BONZON How did Skeem’ Saka come to life? What is your main subject of interest as a photographer? SIPHO GONGXEKA I am interested in investigating youth culture, from fashion to the vernacular we use, to the way we walk, the way we talk — basically every conceivable influence. I am interested in investigating why I am behaving the way I behave in terms of my attitude towards people, my home language, my street language; what influences these — is it the media, or is it the people around me? And adding the fashion side, not to focus on crime specifically, but to look at what connects people. Clothes to me came first. I started looking at how we dress in my neighbourhood and why, and I found that it is mostly what we see on TV. How can TV create my identity? JB Where do you locate those mass media influences? SG With Skeem’ Saka I specifically focused on criminals and gangster fashion — it has local and international references. Just by looking at movies, you get influenced by the way gangsters talk, by the way they dress, the women around them. I am focusing on Soweto, my city, my hood. Hopefully, I will take this project out of South Africa. If someone from Springs or from Cape Town can get what I am saying, I think this project could be exported somewhere else. JB What is the relationship between fashion, mass media and gangsterism? SG I initially wanted to do still lifes of real gangsters, but as I was shooting, I realised that there was this gap between fiction and reality. When I approached real gangsters in my neighbourhood, they didn’t want to have their pictures taken. I decided to use my friends and stereotype them as gangsters. None of us are gangsters, but since gangster movies came out, such as the series Yizo Yizo, the body language and the clothes changed in Soweto. I started picking up how reality feeds fiction, and how fiction merges into reality. I was questioning who gets to be a gangster — also my neighbourhood is full of gangsters, and I really pick on them. My work is a combination of what I see on the TV and what I see in my everyday surroundings. JB Despite these cinematic references, it seems to me that the men photographed in your series are also breaking away from a stereotype. SG In movies, the way gangsters look is always stereotypical and limited. Also, how gangsters relate to women is problematic, because there is always violence involved. But with my work, I tried to twist that a bit; for instance, there’s a picture of a guy with his baby sleeping behind him, which also raises questions about the humanity of gangsters. JB How would you position your series in relation to the ‘born free’ debate? SG ‘Born free’ is quite huge, but I think that we are a generation that challenges things, and in most cases we become rebellious. We are a generation that asks questions. We want to know why we live like this, we want to know why we dress like this, why we behave like this, we want to know where that comes from. I hope Skeem’ Saka will open questions about masculinity.

The Front by Matt Kay Matt Kay studied at the Market Photo Workshop between 2011 and 2013. During the shooting of the series The Front, Kay was mentored by former director and founder David Goldblatt. The Front offers a glimpse into various activities taking place on the Durban beachfront, and how people are making the space of the beach their own. The seashore, a segregated place and iconic photographic theme during the Apartheid era, propelled Kay into a political discourse on photography he did not feel comfortable engaging with. How to elaborate a contemporary visual narrative distinct from the iconography of the past, while photographing a place criss-crossed with violent and painful memories, former knowledge and contemporary challenges? The beachfront that Matt Kay photographed is a place where local activities unfold and international tourism escalates. The memories of the place are sometimes washed away, and at other times they erupt to the surface.

JULIE BONZON How did you start this project? MATT KAY I met David Goldblatt and said that I was interested in the beachfront as a stage, using it as a metaphor for that purpose with these different ‘actors’ as they are walking in and out of it, who are also performing for you because you have a camera. The way I had originally thought of it was, from the promenade to the beach front, at a 35 mm view, what happens in this space? Depending on who is in it, it is a completely different play, but the space remains the same. JB What were the difficulties encountered in photographing The Front? MK I knew that I was going to shoot a very political space, a space I was not really part of, doing a project I was not quite sure of. In South Africa all work is political, but I never made any special effort to deliberately politicise the work, which was important because a lot of my other work has been very personal. When I was shooting this project, I didn’t know the space; I didn’t really know what I was doing and was still trying to get my head around it. JB How did you engage with this historically segregated space today? MK I was really trying not to show and tell these separations and hammer down this ‘South African’ narrative. Especially coming from the Market Photo Workshop, I was so aware of my position as a privileged, young white straight male, going to spaces that I was not part of. I didn’t want to dominate the story, I didn’t want it to be ‘my’ perspective on race in South Africa, or like a political explanation of Durban beachfront as rewritten by Matt Kay. I wanted to be soft about it. JB Were you influenced by the iconography of the ‘struggle’ years of the 1980s and early 1990s while shooting this space? MK While working in South Africa today, you see a lot of those stereotypical images happening in front of you. And you almost take them. As a photographer, subconsciously you are referencing so many images that you are seeing all the time while you are working. It is hard not to just copy something that you have seen. The difficulty about this project was to try not to be political in a very political space, try to be respectful in a space where it is very easy to not be. JB In your other works, you seem to be focused on portraiture and adopting a more lyrical or intimate approach. MK In South Africa the most important work at the moment is personal work, stuff that deals with your own spaces, because this is the one place where you can have your real voice without rerunning the same narrative over and over. It is a difficult space, but this is where you have to work, I think. It’s not for everyone, but I believe that for white South African photographers right now, it is the most interesting space to engage with.

Tshepiso Mazibuko, a student at the Market Photo Workshop between 2014 and 2016, produced this series of photographs under the mentorship of John Fleetwood, director of the Market Photo Workshop between 2002 and 2015. Ho tshepa ntshepedi ya bontshepe comes from a Sesotho proverb meaning ‘to expect something that will never happen’. Born in 1995, Mazibuko elaborated her series in reaction to the terminology ‘born free’. Political and family expectations cast upon young people considered as ‘free’ contrast with everyday realities and apartheid remains. The series compiles elusive portraits of young people with glimpses of daily scenes in the streets of Thokoza. The series is imbued with a feeling of disillusion, while, at the same time, capturing alternative schemes of references — fashion, media taste, youth — casting a light on what young people might share.

JULIE BONZON How did you start this specific project? Tshepiso Mazibuko My idea was to deconstruct the whole ideology of what it means to be ‘born free’. I started photographing academics writing on that topic, and then I realised that the project was a very personal one — it was about self-discovery. I wanted to think about a shared reality with the people that I was photographing. What does democracy mean? What does it mean to be ‘born free’? JB ‘Born free’ seems to be an overused term cast upon a whole generation, how do you feel about it? TM This is one of the reasons I created the project. I did not agree with the idea that, because you are born after 1994, everything is fine: this is ridiculous for me. But the project grew from a place of anger to a place of empathy. These two forces joined together to make something really nice. Conversations with John Fleetwood have been very interesting as well, because we come from very different backgrounds. I’m truly happy with how it turned out. JB Who are the people you photographed? TM Mostly they are the people that I grew up with, or members of my family. I realised that I was battling with the term ‘born free’. I started taking portraits of people around me while asking them how they felt about this ideology. Within our differences, the project took shape. I started making more connections in my own community in Thokoza — these are people I photographed every day. I didn’t have to start from the point of being an outsider. The intimacy was already established, I just had to capture the moments in between. JB The pictures you created in the context of the Of Soul and Joy project (Encounters, 2012) seem very different from the ones in Ho tshepa ntshepedi ya bontshepe: turning to colour, taking pictures of people outdoors, moving from domestic and intimate settings to street scenes. TM I had to explore other ways of photographing and new perspectives, not only be the fly on the wall, as I used to do in my practice, but to challenge myself and stay out of this comfort zone. For this specific project, it was about taking walks in the morning and in the afternoon, trying to find the picture, meeting the people that I knew and going with the flow. JB Have you thought about including self-portraits within the series? TM I am not really interested in photographing myself, I already impose a lot of myself when I take the image to begin with, I hold so much authority in selecting what goes in and what gets left out of the frame. Also there are no captions in the series because I don’t like to control the reading of the image. I believe that the image should be a dialogue between the viewer and the author. JB How have you come to terms with the term ‘born free’ in your photography? TM Ho tshepa ntshepedi ya bontshepe evolved as a journey for myself and for the people I am close to. It started becoming more like an autobiography. The work does not have so much weight as to say that it is a ‘born free’ project, but it is a project shot through a young person’s eyes.