Nadir #15 - Jo Ractliffe, 1987-88
Jo Ractliffe has long been one of my favourite photographers. Her more recent photographic projects like As Terras do Fim do Mundo and The Borderlands were hugely inspirational projects for me with their stark explorations of the landscape and the memories they hide. Yet, there is something about this image from Nadir, one of her very first artistic projects, that catches my imagination and refuses to let it go.
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Looking South towards Claire Island.
The west coast of Ireland is an easily romanticised place. Incredible coastlines, rolling green hills and more than enough space to get happily lost.
" "In April 1996 an extraordinary process began in South Africa. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, under its chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu, held its first public hearings to investigate over thirty years of human rights violations under apartheid. The Commission had been founded in the belief that truth was the only means by which the people of South Africa could come to a common understanding of their past, and that this understanding was necessary if the country was to forge a new national identity in the future. In the first two years more than 20,000 victims made statements to the commissioners and, encouraged by the possibility of amnesty, some 7,000 perpetrators came forward to confess their crimes." "
Read MoreI've recently become interested in these half/half spaces that occur in big cities. Previous posts have visually explored the one edge of Cape Town and the space that appears at the end of a city.
This post has some tentative images from the banks of the Liesbeek River. It was very much an exploratory shoot to see if there is anything worth further exploration. I'm not very happy with what I returned with but there are small pin pricks of interest.
For instance, I enjoyed the gradual urbanisation of the section I visited:
I'm also becoming fascinated by how houses opening adjacent to open spaces need to be barricaded by electric wire and high walls. Ordinarily you would expect people to embrace open spaces as extensions of their living areas. This is obviously not the case and undoubtedly because of our high crime rates in South Africa.
Finally, one can't help but fix on the ways that Cape Town's marginalised citizens become part of the city and the landscape.
According to the owner this stuffed toy was placed here as a sign of the owner's presence and that this space was occupied.
Personal belongings put aside.
Vegetable patch grown from seeds donated by Hare Krishna community.
As I said, I don't think the images are too exciting or illuminating at this point but I do think that there is a story to be explored. As always, now the hard work starts of prising open the essence of this story and building a level of trust with the communities that might be involved.
Hopefully, over the next couple of months I will be able to further illustrate the development of this story.
There is a fascinating conflict being played out at the moment. Thankfully, this conflict does not involve fear, death or the might of the industrial war machine. Instead, it's being fought by two works of art and is being fought on the plains of context, history and the present.
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