This was a pleasing submission.
We discussed how the shack became your focus. There is solid evidence of working throughout the seasons, in different weather and even at night.
This is an interesting point and maybe I should elaborate on it here. I started off by making photographs in the area where the roadworks were beginning thinking that I could show the developments here around the ruins of the Good Hope stores. However towards the end of the year I realised that I had seen quite a lot of change around the shack being used as a shop by locals going up and down the Sani Pass. This included a day when they demolished it and rebuilt it. That day I photographed both the store and them, making a print and passing it on to them at a later date.
The little shack/store then became a bit of a metaphor for the original Good Hope stores that served the same purpose almost 40 years earlier. It was built against the ruins of the original store and is a somewhat more temporary structure although it has been there for some time now.
Interestingly enough the little shack will suffer the same fate as the original stores; it will become redundant. Back in the 1980s the original store that used to provide provisions for the donkey and horse trains that went up and down the pass became redundant when motor vehicles replaced the donkeys and horses. Once the pass is open to all motor vehicles not only four wheel drive ones, there will be no reason to stop at the bottom or in fact board a taxi at that point.
So, this little shack that currently serves a purpose will disappear in ruins as have the original store buildings.
I suggested a further edit based on a narrative/filmic approach. Keep the shack as the central point of the series but circle around it, perhaps in a spiral, moving in from distance. Ignore chronology and colour, concentrate on distance.
I have done this which has meant leaving out a few of my original images and have tested the sequencing on some others which led to a few minor changes when compared with my first option. I believe that I now have a more interesting narrative which I hope to display locally once I have my prints returned after assessment
Paul Seawright (b 1965) – Invisible Cities
My suggestion for further research is limited to looking at Paul Seawright’s Invisible Cities. I highlighted how he let human touches slip into ostensibly a landscape project. This coincides with your process-led approach.
This work by Paul Seawright focuses on the borderlands outside of some major cities in Africa and draws inspiration from Calvino’s book of the same name. Calvino proposes that:
A city is less defined by its physicality and more by the way it’s inhabitants move within; something unseen that hums between the cracks. (Art, sd)
This is what Seawright has tried to capture with his focus on the hidden recesses of the city.
It is particularly interesting to compare the ‘borderlands’ that are now addressed with the ‘Edgelands’ previously photographed, especially in England. Seawright’s work looks at what might be classified a slum areas or more euphemistically ‘borderlands’. These have resulted from the enormous influx of people from rural areas to the cities. He looks ate the way in which these people live, primarily in poverty. Edgelands were the land between city and rural where industry was sited and where people working in those industries lived. In the former, we have people largely out of work and in the latter working class people.
Concentrating my comments on the South African context, this is precisely what Hugh McCabe discusses in his essay. Today we have these ‘Squatter Camps’ on the periphery of the cities and indeed many towns. They have developed so fast that there is no infrastructure providing water, sanitation, waste removal or electricity. As we lead up to national elections in three weeks time this lack of services has led to regular protests about service delivery.
Seawright also had to face the problem of a ‘privileged white European male’ taking images of largely poor black people. I have discussed this extensively in Assignment 5 so will not do so again here other than a few quotes.
Martha Rosler has been deeply critical of the documentary tradition, particularly when it involves a privileged outsider shedding light on marginalised or disadvantaged communities. She would see this practice as merely reinforcing existing power relations and doing little to address any of the root causes of the situation. (McCabe, sd)
Discussing the image below, McCabe says:
‘One might argue that the pictures depicting people sleeping, waiting and not doing very much, are merely perpetuating a stereotype of Africans as being lazy and not interested in work’. (McCabe, ibid)
Untitled (Man Sleeping)
This may to some extent be true but in fact there is no work for them. The population is expanding at a far greater rate then the economic growth and as a result more and more are without work, living off social grants and becoming poorer.
In the following two images we see a woman with her child waiting in the hospital for her turn and in the other one sitting outside in an alley on a plastic chair. Neither engages with the photographer or viewer; they are simply there, doing what they would normally do.
-
-
Untitled (Hospital)
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The people in the photographs never meet the gaze of the viewer, and in this way Seawright allows us to consider them as pure signifiers, and avoids the problems that arise when we are invited to empathise on a personal level with individual subjects. (McCabe, ibid)
What Seawright is doing is to show the people that inhabit these borderlands as they are. It is a sad reflection of society but a reality. As a white South African I probably have a biased view, but in my opinion these people do little to help themselves and the wealthy black people appear to do nothing either. Similarly the Government has failed to address the problem over the past 25 years and it is now becoming a bigger issue.
Many of these pictures, and indeed much of Seawright’s previous work, can be thought of as dealing with the idea of territory. (McCabe, ibid)
This has an interesting connotation in that there are many gangs in these areas and they have their territory. However, it also takes one away from the idea of a landscape and the typical picturesque that is associated with that concept. What we are looking at is the socio-economic ‘territory’ in which these people live.
It is interesting that McCabe thinks of this work as documentary, one may as easily place it in portrait and landscape genres. He argues that as a documentary it departs from the traditional in that it is produced for the gallery wall rather than a the traditional papers of books. His comments are:
Seawright is working within a different, and more contemporary, visual tradition: one that employs large scale detailed colour photographs to draw the viewer in to the work, and encourage him or her to consider long-term causes rather than short-term symptoms. (McCabe, ibid)
But if we accept Martha Rosler’s contention that the ultimate aim of documentary is to “effect change”, then we must consider to what extent this strategy might succeed in doing that. What hope is there of effecting change if these images are only viewed by a select few within the rarefied world of the art gallery? Perhaps the answer is that contemporary documentarians have abandoned the naive belief that they can change the world, or even change minds, and no longer feel compelled to reach out to the world to try and do so. Instead they are now focused on stimulating questions and debate among those who are willing to engage with them, and if they have to come to an art gallery to do that, then so be it. (McCabe, ibid)
An argument put forward by Downey (2006) suggests that these images could be seen as being on the periphery, the borderland, which is precisely where these countries, previously Colonial, are today. The Western world largely loos at but does not care about the plight of Africa.
Is Seawright documenting the limbolike existence of these ‘invisible’ cities or is he resuscitating the old colonial libels about the indolent African who remains forever outside history and therefore condemned to exist beyond the spaces of modernity. (Downey, 2006)
These borderlands could be addressed if enough money and political willpower existed to tare them down and rebuild proper cities in their places. This is however unlikely in the current world economic climate and where political agendas do not see this as important. However, the world dynamics are changing. Repressed and poor are taking to the streets and voicing their concerns.
How does this relate to my Assignment 6?
The interesting element is how Seawright has included people in the images without them being depicted as poor or repressed. This avoids the political view as well as avoiding making them the subjects of typical slum versus wealthy comparisons.
The people in the photographs never meet the gaze of the viewer, and in this way Seawright allows us to consider them as pure signifiers, and avoids the problems that arise when we are invited to empathise on a personal level with individual subjects. (McCabe, ibid)
In Assignment 6 I have tried to include some people as this is an aspect of my photography that I find difficult. During Assignment 5 I concentrated on it and have now done some in this current assignment. There are four different images that include people. The first is where shoppers have exited a taxi and now queue to make purchases at the shack. The second is a women on duty at the ‘stop-go’ who is directing the flow of traffic. The third is the group of shop owners who are breaking down their first shack in order to rebuild it. And finally there is a person sitting in the sun covered in a blanket trying to warm up. In each of these there is no eye contact with the photographer and they are going about their normal activities without any recognition of the photographer. This makes them similar to the Seawright images although I suspect that he may have approached his subjects first which I did not. With the people building the shop I did photograph them as a posed group later so had a direct interaction with them.
The issue of being a privileged white is of course open to debate but I have not intentionally shown them as being poor although this is presumably evident to the viewer. Also, I suspect the perception to a wealthy white Western European person will be different to that of a person born in Africa to whom these scenes are not uncommon.
I do not presume to be able to capture images as poignant as those of Seawright, but do understand the discourse about how he depicts a place or more appropriately a territory, including the local people.
Bibliography
Art. (sd.) Paul Seawright Invisible Cities At: https://www.artrabbit.com/events/paul-seawright-invisible-cities (Accessed on 19 April 2019)
Seawright, P. Invisible Cities. At: http://www.paulseawright.com/invisiblecities (Accessed on 29 March 2019)
Hugh McCabe Traces Of The RealException to the Norm: Representations of Urban Africa in Paul Seawright’s “Invisible Cities” (Part One) March 8, 2010 At: https://tracesofthereal.com/2010/03/08/exception-to-the-norm-representations-of-urban-africa-in-paul-seawrights-invisible-cities-part-one/ (Accessed on 29 March 2019)
Hugh McCabe Traces Of The Real Exception to the Norm: Representations of Urban Africa in Paul Seawright’s “Invisible Cities” (Part Two)(Part Two) March 16, 2010 At: https://tracesofthereal.com/2010/03/16/exception-to-the-norm-representations-of-urban-africa-in-paul-seawrights-invisible-cities-part-two/ (Accessed on 29 March 2019)
Jones, Jonny. (8 May 2001) Paul Seawright’s snapshot of Africa’s uneven development. Socialist Worker. At: https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/11098/Paul%20Seawright?s%20snapshot%20of%20Africa?s%20uneven%20development (Accessed on 19 April 2019)
Corner House Publications, Invisible Cities: Paul Seawright At: https://www.cornerhousepublications.org/publications/invisible-cities/ (Accessed on 19 April 2019)
Downey, A. (1 March 2006) Dublin – Paul Seawright: Invisible cities – Kerlin Gallery – November, December 2005 Circa Archive At: http://circaartmagazine.website/backissues/issue-115-spring-2006-dublin-paul-seawright-invisible-cities-kerlin-gallery-november-december-2005/ (Accessed on 19 April 2019)
Additional research in my notes:
- Hiding in the Open Paul Seawright’s Afghanistan.pdf
- Paul Seawright Exercise 2 – 1: Territorial Photography
- paulseawright.com-Paul Seawright.pdf – Assignment 4
Doug's OCA Landscape Blog 
Comments on Tutor Report Assignment #6
This was a pleasing submission.
We discussed how the shack became your focus. There is solid evidence of working throughout the seasons, in different weather and even at night.
This is an interesting point and maybe I should elaborate on it here. I started off by making photographs in the area where the roadworks were beginning thinking that I could show the developments here around the ruins of the Good Hope stores. However towards the end of the year I realised that I had seen quite a lot of change around the shack being used as a shop by locals going up and down the Sani Pass. This included a day when they demolished it and rebuilt it. That day I photographed both the store and them, making a print and passing it on to them at a later date.
The little shack/store then became a bit of a metaphor for the original Good Hope stores that served the same purpose almost 40 years earlier. It was built against the ruins of the original store and is a somewhat more temporary structure although it has been there for some time now.
Interestingly enough the little shack will suffer the same fate as the original stores; it will become redundant. Back in the 1980s the original store that used to provide provisions for the donkey and horse trains that went up and down the pass became redundant when motor vehicles replaced the donkeys and horses. Once the pass is open to all motor vehicles not only four wheel drive ones, there will be no reason to stop at the bottom or in fact board a taxi at that point.
So, this little shack that currently serves a purpose will disappear in ruins as have the original store buildings.
I suggested a further edit based on a narrative/filmic approach. Keep the shack as the central point of the series but circle around it, perhaps in a spiral, moving in from distance. Ignore chronology and colour, concentrate on distance.
I have done this which has meant leaving out a few of my original images and have tested the sequencing on some others which led to a few minor changes when compared with my first option. I believe that I now have a more interesting narrative which I hope to display locally once I have my prints returned after assessment
Paul Seawright (b 1965) – Invisible Cities
My suggestion for further research is limited to looking at Paul Seawright’s Invisible Cities. I highlighted how he let human touches slip into ostensibly a landscape project. This coincides with your process-led approach.
This work by Paul Seawright focuses on the borderlands outside of some major cities in Africa and draws inspiration from Calvino’s book of the same name. Calvino proposes that:
This is what Seawright has tried to capture with his focus on the hidden recesses of the city.
It is particularly interesting to compare the ‘borderlands’ that are now addressed with the ‘Edgelands’ previously photographed, especially in England. Seawright’s work looks at what might be classified a slum areas or more euphemistically ‘borderlands’. These have resulted from the enormous influx of people from rural areas to the cities. He looks ate the way in which these people live, primarily in poverty. Edgelands were the land between city and rural where industry was sited and where people working in those industries lived. In the former, we have people largely out of work and in the latter working class people.
Concentrating my comments on the South African context, this is precisely what Hugh McCabe discusses in his essay. Today we have these ‘Squatter Camps’ on the periphery of the cities and indeed many towns. They have developed so fast that there is no infrastructure providing water, sanitation, waste removal or electricity. As we lead up to national elections in three weeks time this lack of services has led to regular protests about service delivery.
Seawright also had to face the problem of a ‘privileged white European male’ taking images of largely poor black people. I have discussed this extensively in Assignment 5 so will not do so again here other than a few quotes.
Discussing the image below, McCabe says:
Untitled (Man Sleeping)
This may to some extent be true but in fact there is no work for them. The population is expanding at a far greater rate then the economic growth and as a result more and more are without work, living off social grants and becoming poorer.
In the following two images we see a woman with her child waiting in the hospital for her turn and in the other one sitting outside in an alley on a plastic chair. Neither engages with the photographer or viewer; they are simply there, doing what they would normally do.
What Seawright is doing is to show the people that inhabit these borderlands as they are. It is a sad reflection of society but a reality. As a white South African I probably have a biased view, but in my opinion these people do little to help themselves and the wealthy black people appear to do nothing either. Similarly the Government has failed to address the problem over the past 25 years and it is now becoming a bigger issue.
This has an interesting connotation in that there are many gangs in these areas and they have their territory. However, it also takes one away from the idea of a landscape and the typical picturesque that is associated with that concept. What we are looking at is the socio-economic ‘territory’ in which these people live.
It is interesting that McCabe thinks of this work as documentary, one may as easily place it in portrait and landscape genres. He argues that as a documentary it departs from the traditional in that it is produced for the gallery wall rather than a the traditional papers of books. His comments are:
An argument put forward by Downey (2006) suggests that these images could be seen as being on the periphery, the borderland, which is precisely where these countries, previously Colonial, are today. The Western world largely loos at but does not care about the plight of Africa.
These borderlands could be addressed if enough money and political willpower existed to tare them down and rebuild proper cities in their places. This is however unlikely in the current world economic climate and where political agendas do not see this as important. However, the world dynamics are changing. Repressed and poor are taking to the streets and voicing their concerns.
How does this relate to my Assignment 6?
The interesting element is how Seawright has included people in the images without them being depicted as poor or repressed. This avoids the political view as well as avoiding making them the subjects of typical slum versus wealthy comparisons.
In Assignment 6 I have tried to include some people as this is an aspect of my photography that I find difficult. During Assignment 5 I concentrated on it and have now done some in this current assignment. There are four different images that include people. The first is where shoppers have exited a taxi and now queue to make purchases at the shack. The second is a women on duty at the ‘stop-go’ who is directing the flow of traffic. The third is the group of shop owners who are breaking down their first shack in order to rebuild it. And finally there is a person sitting in the sun covered in a blanket trying to warm up. In each of these there is no eye contact with the photographer and they are going about their normal activities without any recognition of the photographer. This makes them similar to the Seawright images although I suspect that he may have approached his subjects first which I did not. With the people building the shop I did photograph them as a posed group later so had a direct interaction with them.
The issue of being a privileged white is of course open to debate but I have not intentionally shown them as being poor although this is presumably evident to the viewer. Also, I suspect the perception to a wealthy white Western European person will be different to that of a person born in Africa to whom these scenes are not uncommon.
I do not presume to be able to capture images as poignant as those of Seawright, but do understand the discourse about how he depicts a place or more appropriately a territory, including the local people.
Bibliography
Art. (sd.) Paul Seawright Invisible Cities At: https://www.artrabbit.com/events/paul-seawright-invisible-cities (Accessed on 19 April 2019)
Seawright, P. Invisible Cities. At: http://www.paulseawright.com/invisiblecities (Accessed on 29 March 2019)
Hugh McCabe Traces Of The RealException to the Norm: Representations of Urban Africa in Paul Seawright’s “Invisible Cities” (Part One) March 8, 2010 At: https://tracesofthereal.com/2010/03/08/exception-to-the-norm-representations-of-urban-africa-in-paul-seawrights-invisible-cities-part-one/ (Accessed on 29 March 2019)
Hugh McCabe Traces Of The Real Exception to the Norm: Representations of Urban Africa in Paul Seawright’s “Invisible Cities” (Part Two)(Part Two) March 16, 2010 At: https://tracesofthereal.com/2010/03/16/exception-to-the-norm-representations-of-urban-africa-in-paul-seawrights-invisible-cities-part-two/ (Accessed on 29 March 2019)
Jones, Jonny. (8 May 2001) Paul Seawright’s snapshot of Africa’s uneven development. Socialist Worker. At: https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/11098/Paul%20Seawright?s%20snapshot%20of%20Africa?s%20uneven%20development (Accessed on 19 April 2019)
Corner House Publications, Invisible Cities: Paul Seawright At: https://www.cornerhousepublications.org/publications/invisible-cities/ (Accessed on 19 April 2019)
Downey, A. (1 March 2006) Dublin – Paul Seawright: Invisible cities – Kerlin Gallery – November, December 2005 Circa Archive At: http://circaartmagazine.website/backissues/issue-115-spring-2006-dublin-paul-seawright-invisible-cities-kerlin-gallery-november-december-2005/ (Accessed on 19 April 2019)
Additional research in my notes: