The Artful Viewer - by Melvyn Minnaar


A Month of Photo Indulgence

A friend, who normally contemplates carefully matters of culture and cash, recently bought a photograph. A real image, taken by that great man from Soweto, Santu Mofokeng, of an enigmatic township scene, had been printed on paper in black and white, and my friend paid a fair amount of money for it. He had previously bought some rather nice prints and even a small painting or two, but this was his first photograph.

‘Photography as art’. Doesn’t just saying it, bring on a frisson of sorts? Yes, there is hardly an argument here anymore, but there we were, two friends, after the deed had been done and the cheque written, we brought out photo albums of family and friend snaps (perhaps consolidating our status as picture collectors, although my friend’s had now taken a more serious vein) in a ritual to talk though the old questions of art again.

To say we are mid-season in plenty of photo talk is an understatement. This is, after all, the glorious month of October when the fourth Cape Town Month of Photography has the city buzzing with camera and print fever.

Particularly exciting about the Cape Town Month of Photography - this time orchestrated by Jenny Altschuler and the group who keeps the South African Centre for Photography alive - is not that it brings into the spotlight the multitude of talent around us and beyond, but makes a vigorous effort to bring the art of photography to the public in the broadest manner possible.
The formal galleries and museums are hosting particularly fine shows, but there are also photographs in unusual spaces, broadening the experience of both artists and viewers. Many famous names pop up, but also unknowns and fun stuff made by kids abound.

As Jenny Altschuler - not an unaccomplished photographer herself, and a curator who has worked very hard to pull this whole CTMoP together - wrote: “There is not one kind of photograph or one way of using photography. Photography has many purposes, from telling the social story to selling a commercial product, or giving visual pleasure with colour, composition and design. Photographers use the medium in the same way as musicians create music, choosing genres ranging from rap to jazz or classical.”

Well, that’s a pretty fair and nicely-wide motivation for the truly spectacular art festival that we are experiencing right now.

Altogether some 115 photographers from all over South Africa, as well as international guests, have shown up for the party. With an overarching theme of Emergence and Emergency - which leaves plenty of thematic space to explore visually - Altschuler and colleagues have issued a generous, but also challenging invitation to Capetonians to come to terms with contemporary photography.

Let’s hope more and more make use of the opportunity to go and have a look. The Mother City is a good home for the art of photography.
Cape Town has always been blessed with top photographic artists. Of course, the setting and people may have to do with the fact that, on the high-commercial side, like fashion and advertising, some top lense operators have been based here.
But it is also home to some of the most formidable original talent. Younger artists such as Pieter Hugo and Michael Subotzky are already international stars. (Both are, as we speak, for example, taking part in international exhibitions; with Subotzky featuring in, no less, a show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.) The brothers Husain and Hasan Essop, recent Michaelis boykies, make eye-catching stuff and are winning wider audiences by the day. And Araminta de Clermont’s astounding Life After visual essay, which Joao Ferreira has just introduced, is destined for global acclaim.

Not that we take the likes of Guy Tillim (his recent show at Michael Stevenson was brilliant), David Lurie (Fragments from the Edge is a wow), George Hallett (Made in France series is at the Iziko SA Museum) or even maestro David Goldblatt for granted.
And while the brilliance of American Stephen Shore (a must-see at the Iziko SANG, and don’t miss his talks later in the month) is a cherry on top of the CTMoP, there is the exciting start-out work by Mandla Mnyakama and Lindeka Qampi of the Iliso Labantu group. They are showing work at their studio in Commercial street.

It is most fitting too that the organisers are paying tribute to Neville Dubow. Part of the Talking Images Digital show-and-tell projections at The Biocafe at the CityVarsity School of Media and Creative Arts, is an event scheduled for October 6.
The ever-well-spoken and informed Neille Dubow did a great deal to promote photography, and the quiet elegant works he himself made from behind the lens (those Parisian street scenes, for example), are safely in the permanent collection of the Iziko SA National Gallery.

Like my pal who acquired his first serious photographic art work, Dubow will be much cheered by the activities of one whole (and more!) Cape Town Month of Photography.

Enjoy!