South Africa at the NY Photo Festival

Editor at Large went over to Dumbo to listen to Jodi Bieber talk about her new book on Soweto. It is quite an honor to be asked to give a talk at the festival and Bieber's work is certainly strong, interesting and even groundbreaking (though some photos made me think of Zwelethu Mthethwa's shack portraits and also of Lolo Veleko's "Smarties"). But we think Bieber could have been more prepared for the talk and more conscious of the fact that she was talking to Americans who have only the scantest knowledge of what life in South Africa was like during apartheid and what it's like now. For example, showing a photograph of black South Africans swimming in a public pool and commenting: "Before black people didn't swim," is not really enough information. Same goes for the amazing photo of the women with the boa constrictor wrapped around her body and the photo of the gay couple. Most speakers suffer from TMI (too much info). Bieber made us yearn to understand the context better and to know more.

Meanwhile, at the Tobacco Warehouse, I spotted the work of one South African photographer and one Swiss/Lebanese photographer who did a documentary in South Africa:

1. I loved Market Photo Workshop student, Simangele Kalisa's "Clothed" project. Kalisa grew up in Soweto. She says that she's using the title "Clothed" for a number of reasons. I like this one: "In most traditionally black Christian churches and movements in South Africa -- with most having their own uniform and therefore a particular semiotic system associated with dress and identity -- uniforms are called Izambatho (Zulu) or diaparo (Sotho) which translates into English simply as 'clothes'. Looking at the history of colonialism, and in particular how Africans were referred to as 'the naked'and colonisers 'the clothed,' it becomes apparent how identity can literally be fashioned by dress."




2. Mariella Furrer's hard-hitting black and white photographs document the realities of child sexual abuse beyond the headlines that are so hideous to read but also so easy to forget. "South Africa records one of the highest rates of child sexual abuse in the world," says her artist's statement. "Because the sexual abuse of children remains taboo, it is not spoken about openly and is, in a sense, invisible." This heartbreaking photo shows a child being examined for signs of abuse.