Sometimes a surprise encounter is the best thrill. This little show really needs more space, but the humble presentation (and also that cluttered challenge to viewers in what is really a photographic shop) underpins a certain unassuming honesty about the whole project, and a directness which is crystal clear.

It’s a great, even feel-good encounter, once you get your eyes into these spunky images about our city. Who says there’s nothing new and fresh to say about or show of this visually-dense place where we live?

The exhibition Taking Pictures, Telling Stories offers a kind of snap-shot story by a truly observant flaneur, even though the individual images are those of fourteen very different persons, professional and not so, armed with cameras. The point of departure, as curator and master photographer Paul Weinberg spelled out to the participants and implies in the cunningly simple title, is that images can be loaded with narrative. The single, captured picture can have endless histories spinning out on all sides of that moment recorded.

And so it is with most of these fine photographs. The added value for local viewers is that, in recognition of the Cape landmarks or urban landscapes that fore- or background the scenes, we sense a civic bond with one another in all the social diversity on show here. Weinberg quotes the renown photographer Sebastiao Selgado, who described documentary photography as, ‘a vector connecting the different realities of people around the world’. Here it is local, and thrilling.

It would not be so, of course, if the images were not potent. The curator has seen to that.

The exhibition is the result of an advanced, six-weeks course in documentary photography held last June under the auspices of the Centre for Curating the Archive at UCT’s Hiddingh campus. Participants, says Weinberg, came from all sectors of society and walks of life: professionals with diverse skills, working photographers, and some with only a simple desire to improve their photographic skills.

It is clear from the selection on show that he held a tight course. There is a strong awareness of composition (sometimes, as can be expected, a little over-the-top), clarity of image, colour and light. But nowhere does it become sentimental - an easy trap for this kind of thing. Rather there is often an understatedness, even minimalist view at work. And the mystery of stories embedded.

The show can be read as an academic exercise; a good, rewarding one at that. But there is more to it. It is obvious that those in the programme who went out to document aspects of our city aren’t outsiders. They were all too aware of the stories that great pictures can tell about Cape Town. And it shows. Well done.

*The Exposure Gallery is at the Old Biscuit Mill. Tel 021- 4474124.

Captions:

Photograph by Anna Telford in a series: Portrait of a Refugee, City Centre, Cape Town.

First Published in the Cape Times February 2010