Blikkiesdorp (Tin Can Town)
(This is an image of GPS tracks from our first mapping run in Blikkiesdorp)
This weekend I found out that at least one person is actually following my blog! I was shocked and thrilled to hear this news. So to celebrate, I am posting a special treat for my one fan. Apart from the photograph below, I haven’t posted any images of actual artwork that I have been working on here because much of it is unpolished and I feel like I should be withholding it for my show in December (hypothetically, the purpose of this blog so far has been mainly to update fellow Haas Scholars, mentors, and friends on my thoughts and doings).
Anyhow, today Ryan and I finally mapped Blikkiesdorp in Delft—the first site that really inspired us to come do work here. When we first saw aerial imagery of this site last year, we were completely stirred and intrigued. And after today, I found that it really was the most interesting space I’ve ever experienced. It was eerie and breathtaking in so many different ways.
Below is a photograph I made while there today.
Ryan and I obliviously found ourselves in a situation the other night where we were the guests of honor at a Christian fundraising event in Delft. This was all quite shocking considering that we thought we were invited just to watch some kids play soccer. By the end of the night we were asked to give inspirational speeches on the karaoke mic. Ryan found this all very disturbing and extremely awkward while it somehow just reminded me of Thailand.
This is the baby photo of Elton who invited us out for this event. To the left of him is Jesus.
Pieter Hugo. Untitled, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana 2010
I just went to an opening at the Michael Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town. It seems like this gallery has a monopoly on all the top contemporary South African artists. But I went to see Pieter Hugo’s Permanent Error exhibition which shows his new Agbogbloshie Market series from Ghana. I think he may be the most interesting documentary photographer alive right now.
His work is work that really illustrates the relationship between the photographer and the researcher. How is it that a photographer can stumble upon such arresting secret landscapes? They are secrets in the way that they are formerly unseen visually, and for many, unheard of. It is obvious that the job of the photographer is to show you something that you’ve never seen before, or at least never seen in a certain frame. But with this series, Hugo shows you a landscape that you would never have imagined exists. With the photography mapping project I am working on, I have been thinking a lot about this relationship between photography and personal agency. What can photography lessons do for these students? In the case of Pieter Hugo, it seems that photography is his natural way of navigating the world.
At the show, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s film Noreturn was also a delicious success!
Photo Fun
We finally met the students that we will be working with at Ikamva Youth! For our informal introduction class/experiment, we passed out cameras and had students take pictures of each other and themselves with name tags they had made. The goal was to introduce them to the cameras, see where they are technically, and to collect photos of them with their names (which are mostly in Xhosa- a language none of us will probably ever be able to pronounce).
Although photography intervention projects have become quite popular in the last decade, I never personally understood how exciting it was to give someone a camera who has never owned one or used one before. The students loved it and were immediately exploding with creativity. It was really inspiring and sparked so many new ideas about how I could potentially lead the workshops. In the 15 minutes we gave the students, they took over 250 photos! I really liked it when they started copying each others photos.
Below are some pictures I took of them during the exercise. Photos that the students took will be posted soon!
