Epiphany

Kia ora tatou:

A long time ago, in a previous life, I loved photographing people and Life. Documentary photography was a passion for me. It still is. I also worked in black and white, making pictures in my darkroom, and was happy doing this, until one day I found I had become allergic to the chemistry. At the same time I had become fascinated by colour, so the two things, put together, took me into a different space. I thought I had moved on from that.

Until a week ago.

As part of the first Freeman Patterson workshop at Kamieskroon, a small town about 500km up the coast from Cape Town, we took the class to the small village of Nourivier (Afrikaans for narrow river). Nourivier is a small village of maybe 100 people. There is nothing there but kopjes and stunted foliage. The people live in cement-brick houses about the size of the average Kiwi’s woodshed, or in small tent-like structures made from woven reeds. There is a school, a council office and very little else. They survive by tending a few goats and growing vegetables. In summer water is a real issue. There is no work (South Africa has an unemployment rate of 34%).It all sounds pretty primitive, and you would think that there would be misery and despair. There is very little welfare here. But the reverse applies.
We went to photograph the children of Nourivier. When we arrived they had just finished their cross-country, which meant a 10km run around the mountain- in bare feet!

We arrived as the presentation was taking place. All the children who had completed it were receiving medals, and there was a packet of sweets for them, a really big deal. As they milled around, the boys scrapping happily in the dusty streets, as boys do, and the girls working on their social interaction skills, as girls do, I realised how much happiness was around me. The children, most of whom have only one set of clothes, were full of joy and warmth. Many of them came up to us and led us by the hand around the village, talking to us in their language, and sometimes riding on our shoulders. It was a special time that brought home to me the fragility and preciousness of Life. Africa reminds you of that every day.

I knew I wanted to photograph it, but how remained an issue until I got there. As we climbed out of the vehicles, I noticed that only 2 children were wearing shoes. I am informed that shoes are a luxury here. Somehow I wanted to get involved with what was going on, which meant getting close. There was so much warmth and energy here I wanted to reflect it in my images.
As you can tell, the place had got to me.

It still is.

Making photographs is about choices, and the first one as a photographer is to decide what you are feeling and what you want to say. All the decisions about exposure, equipment and approach follow from that. To do otherwise is be the slave of habit or peer pressure.
So I opted for getting involved and used my 16-35mm lens-at 16mm. In most of the photographs I was no more than 30cm from my subject. Working in this way was a kind of dance, in which I was a participant. Cartier-Bresson talks about this in his book The Decisive Moment. Thus the images are as much about the photographer as they are about the subject.


I elected to shoot them in colour, to use strong saturated colour, because that was how I saw the moment. Africa has no grey zones. The colour images reflected my perceptions that day.
Last week, as part of the second workshop, we went back. This time there was a different feeling, and I became aware of an underlying pathos to the place. I made only a few images, shooting jpegs. Later, when I was editing them, the colour seemed at odds with what I had felt. It just didn’t ring true, so I greyscaled them in Lightroom (the conversion process in this app is fantastic). Now the feeling I had experienced felt true. So I greyscaled the original set and found to my surprise that they were equally valid.

You see, colour adds a layer of meaning and psychological baggage that we often tend to overlook; it is a compositional element that we ignore at our (photographic) peril. Black and white reduces an image to its essentials and reinforces meaning. Which path you take depends on the content of the image and your feelings about the subject. Have a look at the different renditions of the image and decide for yourself.

Neither is better; only different.

Ka kite ano