Cultural Globalization: Are South African Artists Riding the Wave?

Nicholas Hlobo is Xhosa. He was born in 1975 in the Western Cape province of South Africa. After school, Hlobo went to work at a local cement factory to make a living. Hlobo grew up to be a man proud of his cultural heritage and his Xhosa identity. He kept the reality of his background close at heart everywhere he went. After working at the cement factory for two and a half years Hlobo decided to enrol for a degree at Wits Technikon in Johannesburg. He started creating sculptures that spoke of his childhood, his Xhosa identity and his experiences as a young man in an urban city. Today, Hlobo – also publically and proudly homosexual - sips champagne in art galleries across the globe, looking on patiently as crowds of international art buyers, sellers, collectors admire his work and bathe him with compliments. Galleries in Oslo, Boston, Sydney, New York and Guangzhou (China) – to mention only a few – have all taken honour in representing Hlobo’s work. Hlobo’s life is the personification of the effects of cultural globalization. His art works explain why.

Nicholas Hlobo, 2008 at Akris Gallery, Newbury Street. 

Ingubo Yesizwe, is a work Hlobo first exhibited in 2008. It takes up the surface of an entire exhibit area, hanging from the wall by a narrow strip of material which then protrudes unashamedly across the gallery space as the thin material cord gives birth to a giant, bulgy lump - a seemingly slaughtered body of rubber, leather and pieces of ribbon – spilling its guts across the gallery floor and ending in a thin slither of material that splatters into the opposite corner of the room like a ooze of body fluid. To Hlobo, Ingubo Yesizwe carries an array of metaphoric meaning: First and foremost that of a slaughtered cow – an animal of both traditional as well as socio-economic significance to the Xhosa culture, hence his use of leather; Hlobo’s inclusion of rubber, in return, represents the urban and the industrial - both very relevant aspects to his current life where he travels from one big city to the next as well as the inner city of Johannesburg where he is currently resides and as opposed to his life back home in the Western Cape; Rubber, however, is also a material Hlobo connects to sexuality, sexual toys and condoms. Because of traditional Xhosa culture’s antagonism towards homosexuality, in this art piece Hlobo tries to marry these two divergences within his artwork as a symbolic representation of himself.

This idea of escaping yet clinging on to background, tradition and past is also evident in the way this artwork gets transferred to and from locations. Stored and transported in segments – once it reaches the gallery – these separate segments are zipped-up together, stuffed and draped into its form of display. This reconstruction of the piece calls to mind the memoirs of ‘past journeys, of pain...[and]pleasure’, but it also celebrates the ability to transform and to adapt – a human capacity made compulsory by the globalized world.

Art Work by Nicholas Hlobo, Title: Ingubo Yesizwe, 2008

Ingubo Yesizwe – as is true for the majority of Hlobo’s other works – is clearly aimed at creating a conversation between past and present, traditional and modern, local and global culture. One could argue that – with the onset of cultural globalization - there emerged a question of a discrepancy within the South African as well as the wider African art world: Should we reassert our cultural, geographical identities in our art works as a way of showing our devotion to it and our pride for it?; Or rather break away from tradition and our past and disconnect our cultural and geographical identities from our identities as artists? Some lean towards the latter, arguing that their geographical origins as South Africans is not all that define them. They have other thoughts, concerns, needs and opinions that require a voice and that have very little to do with their South African or African identities. These artist then carries on to argue that the fact that they are South African, like Hlobo, should not overshadow their work or detract attention from the original sober or liberated themes or their art works or deny it its need to be viewed in its own right. This discrepancy poses the question: What is art? Aesthetic proclamation of cultural reclamation?

There might not be any ‘correct’ or valid answer to this question. The Western perception – which automatically has dominated the global perception - of what art is today, is dramatically different from what has traditionally been seen as ‘art’ in Africa. Keeping in mind that originally the West shared Africa’s idea of what ‘art’ might be, with the onset of modernity that idea changed and became what ‘art’ is to the West today. ‘Art’ according to the Western and thus global definition, it could be argued, is a object created with the following three leading aims in mind: Firstly to astonish its audience with is unchallengeable aesthetic beauty, through its use of colour, shape, line, its level of realism, impressionism or abstraction and so forth; Or secondly, profit making – not only for the gallery but also for the artist whom it represents as well as for the future rise in value of that art piece; And last but not the least, as a platform of expression of socio-political points of view, voicing social or political protégés and creating awareness within society of certain social confrontations, exploitations and misperceptions. An example of the latter could be feminist paintings and embroidering flowing from feminist movements in the 1960, or Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades, in reaction to the infiltration and consumerism in the West. Ultimately, the Western perception of ‘art’, is that of an object that is suited for ‘the white cube’, or the art gallery – where the crème of society find a place to show off their expensive attire, voice their ‘intellectual’ commentary and spend their money – and therefore of objects of aesthetic proclamation.

‘Art’, in the traditional African sense, is largely removed from this perception. Here, ‘art’  - as was also true for the traditional Western definition of art before Modernity - are objects that were erected with two leading aims in mind: For everyday use or reasons of practicality - such as ceramics, pottery, weaved mats and baskets, etcetera; Or as forms of culturally or symbolically significant objects such as beaded ornaments, sculptures, masks, paintings and costumes. According to this definition audiences, profit and political or social agenda’s are all entirely irrelevant.

Ga Tribe Coffins, Ghana

The west has long confused African objects of real cultural value and traditional significance as objects of aesthetic proclamation. Sculptures, masks, costumes, paintings, shrines and many more have been recruited, bought, exhibited, auctioned or sold as objects that were erected with the sole aim of being ‘art’, to be exhibited within a gallery and to be sold to a potential buyer.  Most of these objects however were never erected for this purpose and were thus misunderstood and misrepresented by Western art rhetoric. Once these African cultural objects entered Western art spheres they became entirely disconnected from their original intents and meanings. A man from Ghana, for example, who makes coffins shaped like cars, shoes, Coca-Cola bottles or fish, never made these coffins with the aim of aesthetic recognition, to be exhibited in a gallery or to be sold for a fortune. His coffins – now simply dubbed ‘Funerary Art’ by western art critiques, were originally intended to be cultural objects, carriers of spiritual value and cultural significance for the families who commissioned that coffin and was meant to transfer the deceased to afterlife in a way that he or she would have been most likely to be remembered – as a taxi driver, hence the car-shaped coffin, or as a fisherman, hence the coffin shaped like a fish. These coffins, to both the ‘artist’ and his community, is seen as symbolic gestures of how they will remember their loved ones and what their loved ones resembled in their lives. But, place these coffins in a gallery and put a price on it – and a world of definitions, aesthetic pleasures and theories can be created around it that totally overwrites it original intent. ‘This’, the curator might maintain, ‘is African art.’

Because so much of the latter has been exhibited and explained through the terms of the former definition of art, a lot of African art has been decontextualized, ripped from its original meaning, misunderstood and devalued. African art’s first introduction to the ‘globalized’ art world has thus been a merciless, one sided and – once again – subordinate experience of which it is, too this day, trying to recover from. South African art critic, Amy Halliday’s, captures this uneasy relationship between African art and cultural globalization in stating that contemporary art from the African continent is “often either excluded from, or uncomfortably assimilated into, an overarching Western narrative”.

This explains why so many African artists have turned their backs on Western art markets and attempted to create a body of literature in which they could articulate the meaning and symbolism of their work themselves rather than it being explained through Western or global points of view. Hlobo’s celebration of Xhosa culture and tradition in his works is evident of form of cultural reclamation found in so many other contemporary art works. Cultural reclamation thus becomes a tool with wish local artist can claim back the right of meaning-making and definitions attached to their works.

Art Work by Zanele Muholi, Title: Being Series, 2007

Other local South African artists, have done the opposite. Being frustrated with the limitations – not only in terms of capacity and opportunity, but also culturally – of the local South African art market, they have decided to turn their focus more towards the global art market. Artists of this kind often have little choice but to expand their markets to international fronts. The reason for this is that their South African audience has on numerous occasions proved to be ill-prepared for the controversiality, unconventionality and the liberal mind-set represent in their work and therefore lacks the capacity for expression their art requires. Tradition and culture still often predominate South African art audience’s interest and critique. And recurrent reference to homosexuality in Hlobo’s works also stands as vulnerable target to the cultural limitations of the local South African art scene. This became evident in the recent local reaction to South African artist Zanele Muholi’s work. Muholi is a lesbian portraitist. An entire collection of her photograph featuring powerful images of black lesbians, guys, transsexuals and biosexuals were stolen from her home earlier this year. The robbery was said to have been rooted in homophobic extremism. In march 2010 South Africa’s former Arts and Culture minister, Lulu Xingwana, was quoted as calling Muholi’s photographs of nude lesbians ‘immoral’ and ‘against nation-building’.

Zanele Muholi, Faces and Phases Series, 2007

It is therefore comprehensible that so many South African artists have focussed their attention on the global market, for that is the only arena in which all shackles on expression are removed and where the more controversial and the more off-beat, the more successful an artist is seen to be.  Art is ultimately form of expression and within a democracy no one person or clause should be allowed to put a leash on that which can be expressed and made public in art. Freedom of speech goes further than media and politics. It also extends to art. 

Hlobo’s work, it could be argued, represents – as do so many other contemporary local art works - this push-and-pull between holding on to the past and giving into the future. Yet, it has to be said that - even though on the one hand of Hlobo’s work strongly clings on to his traditional Xhosa background - the way in which he expresses this relationship is extremely modern and intensely abstract.  It is - unlike so many other contemporary local art works - in the way that his work is not only erected in the name of tradition, but also – and unmistakably so - in the name of aesthetic beauty. And it is exactly this perfect balance between cultural reclamation and aesthetic proclamation found in Hlobo’s work, that makes him so immensely attractive to the global art market. His work captures the dual intent of local art – the pride and power of the traditional or local as well as the excitement and opportunity offered by the modern and global. And this is unique even in the global art world, where most artist have chosen either extreme but failed to mend the two together as Hlobo’s work has managed to do. Hlobo’s unique talent in neatly captured in art critic, Pamela Allara’s words, which states that Hlobo work “...effortlessly adapts the vocabulary of international contemporary art to reference his own cultural assimilation into a globalized culture, while maintaining his Xhosa Heritage ad South African gay male identity.”

The Politics of Portraiture

According to Graham Clarke the ultimate aim of any portrait photographer is to capture the ‘inner’ being of his or her subject.  Two terms necessitates a clearer description: that of “’inner’ being’ and that of ‘portraiture’. Once defined, the hunt for the ‘inner’ being can commenced. An investigation of four alternative portraits leads to, not only a definition, but perhaps also the apparently overlooked motive of portraiture itself. What comes to be revealed is whether portraiture and ‘inner’ being either depend, or is even at all hindered by each other’s existence.

 Had one to define what Graeme Clarke termed the subject’s ‘inner’ being, could perhaps be described as a powerful, psychological inherence, which not only permits its own exposure, but also determines the form in which it will be exposed. ‘Inner’ being could be said to be expressed through personality. Personality – in obedience to the psychology of the inner being – can either accept or abandon the inborn nature of that inner being through its behaviour.  Inner being has its own life.  It survives on its own terms. Perhaps the ‘inner’ being even exists entirely disconnected from the physical body.  It might, if desired, make use of that body to express itself, but it can also deny itself through the performance of that body. Therefore, ‘inner’ being could be defined as the un-posed, the un-masqued, the denuded personality of the subject. It is personality at home once it has washed its face.     

 In the portraits taken of the ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church, Ds. J. J. M. Raubenhe Imer poses, once and for all, heroically (fig. 1). His gaze – directed to the upper right of the viewer - leaves one to believe that the minister is busy contemplating a matter, while his hands – neatly folded on the backrest of the chair – suggests that he has already solved the matter he was so eagerly contemplating. His upright posture and his neatly organized hair speaks of a certain pride in elegance and precision. The photographer makes use of what looks like a backlight, but what might just be the imitation of a backlight printed on the backdrop of the set. The light creates an almost magical feel, providing the minister with a divine presence as if he has just stepped through the light, out of his celestial world and into the mortal world of the viewer. This exaggerated indulgence in the representation of the male subject is what came to be known, in the words of Walter Benjamin, as the ‘spell of personality’.

Fig. 1

This portrait of Ds. Imer was displayed, along with other portraits of past ministers, on the back wall of the church. It could therefore be seen as an extension of the church building and therefore had to conform to the formality inherent in the church’s architecture and atmosphere. The display of the portraits served as a visual report of the history of the church’s body of authority. The original viewers of these portraits were church goers. Presumably it was therefore crucial that these portraits were ‘exemplary’ modifications of the church leaders.  It had to assure viewers of the ministers’ diligence and their ‘deserved’ respect. The portrait of Ds. Imer therefore in no respect projects the nature of his ‘inner’ being, but perhaps rather a false fabrication of his ‘divine’ being.  This leads one to believe that, instead of attempting to capture the ‘inner’ being of the minister,  the portrait was constructed as advertisement of the sacred image of the Dutch Reformed Church itself.

Fig. 2

In the portrait by Seydou Keita, one notices a woman reclining amidst her collection of possessions (fig. 2). Her skirt – a heap of fabric – is spread out up to the edges of the frame. The skirt entirely encircles her upper-body forming a curved line. This circular composition is repeated in the inner-frame by the rounded shape of her slouched posture, to the extent that she seems almost sucked into the vortex of fabric surrounding her. Her oversized headpiece appears to be heavy - seemingly pushing her head towards her knees and thereby intensifying the swallow-effect created by her wardrobe. Her handbag and new shoe receive visual priority in the frame. Both these items are foregrounded to emphasize their importance as possessions of value. The girl in return occupies the second plane of the photograph, almost becoming ‘secondary subject’ to the primary focus on possession.

 The ultimate intent of the traditional portrait is to idealize the subject. Keita’s clients’ idea of the ideal self involved the demonstration of one’s success, elegance, modernity and cosmopolitanism.              In Keita’s studio in Mali this was achieved by the clients’ demonstration of their valuables in the form of costume, props and jewellery. The subject thus expressed her ideal ‘self’ by constructing a physical context through a strange interplay of material goods from both traditional as well as western origins. The inclusion of western objects commented on Mali’s emerging independence from France and the subject’s preceding exposure to European commodities. 

Keita’s was known for his ability to ‘amplify’ his subject’s beauty. In this portrait he uses a soft sidelight to emphasize the smoothness of the subject’s skin, showering it with a healthy glow. The lighting also creates subtle shadows on her face which in contrast with the white part of in her eyes enhances their size.  The high angle Keita chose to photograph his subject from however, makes her seem shy, almost intimidated by the his presence. She stares up at the observer (viewer, camera or photographer) with a somewhat suspicious expression, as if unaware of what the camera will make of her. From the moment a portrait is created until the end of its life time it will be exposed to the public eye. Roland Barthes expresses this consciousness of observation in what he calls the subject’s ‘image repertoires’:

 In front of the lens, I am at the same time:  The one I think I am; The one I want others to think I am, (and) The one the photographer thinks I am... 

Two factors therefore determined the representation of the subject in the final portrait: Firstly the girl’s physical performance in the picture making process as affected by her awareness of the presence of the public eye; And secondly the girl’s extreme desire – similar to those of Keita’s other clients - to construct an unreal world in which she could please the material expectations of that public eye. This metaphorically charged mise-en-scene created around the girl’s ideal image of ‘self’, as well as her behaviour in front of the camera therefore speaks much more of her social consciousness than it does of her ‘inner being’. This is a mere display for the public eye - the creation of a public ‘self’.

Fig. 3

The same could be said of David Selefe’s portrait of a woman posed against a cityscape background (Fig. 3). Selefe uses double exposure to insert his subject into her ideal scenery. The subject’s representation is no longer limited by her geographic location. She can now travel visually. This visual dynamics allows for the subject to ‘sell’ herself as a representative of the world. Similar to Keita’s subject, Selefe’s subject consciously chooses to fabricate a false world of ‘achievement’ in which to portray her ideal image. 

In the 1960’s Daune Michals experimented with the same manipulation technique as Selefe. Michals was blatantly honest about the nature of his portraits: ‘My portraits are lies...’ he said, ‘They have nothing to do with the person at all’. Even though Seydou Keito never made use of technical manipulation to construct false reality – he still fabricated reality by means of mise-en-scene.  Keito’s portrait is therefore also ‘a lie’.  His and his subject’s ‘lie’ however, is made to look so real that it becomes believable. Unlike Keito’s portrait, Selefe’s is a deliberate exploitation of the fabrication of a reality through an obvious exaggeration of technical manipulation. Most of Selefe’s portraits, including the one under discussion, contain clear elements of technical fiddling. This is evident in the untidy edges of Selefe subject’s head, allowing it to adapt a sort of ‘cut-and-paste’ - character.  Selefe’s portrait could be described as an almost humoristic admittance to the portrait’s inability to represent a truthful self. Just as in Michal’s portraits, both Keito nor Selefe’s portraits represent nothing but ‘a photograph of an individual, not the individual  him(her)self.’

From the portrait of the Dutch Reformed Church minister, to the portraits of Keito and Selefe, the supposed ‘inner’ being of the subjects were entirely invisible. As soon as the body was exposed to the public eye (the camera), a new public ‘self’ was created serving as a display to please public expectations of this public. Cindy Sherman saw this interplay between subject performance and mise-en-scene as proof of the body’s naturally inherent ‘passion for posing’. The studio set becomes a stage on which the subject can adapt any role he or she desires. The subject’s consciousness of the ‘audience’ makes him ‘act’ in a particular way. This ‘act’ is perhaps employed by the ‘inner’ being of the subject as a means to mask itself from the ‘audience’. Roland Barthes termed this consciousness of observation the ‘mortification of the subject’. Once aware of public observation - this is, according to Barthes, the moment the subject freezes into a pose - there occurs an immediate ‘...Death in person’.

Fig. 4

Perhaps if the body was stripped from any form of idealization the subject could be reborn into pure form and become willing to reveal its ‘inner’ being. Felix Nadar (1820-1910) believed this to be possible.  Fundamentally concerned with the exposure of the ‘inner’ being, Nadar uncovered his subjects of anything ‘extraneous to the central, and singular, presence of the individual before the camera’. The portrait of Kabbo (Fig. 4) is evident of a seemingly similar technique to that of Nadar’s. As subject of the portrait Kabbo is denied any means of idealizing his image of ‘self’. He is represented naked without expression or pose.  Kabbo’s portrait is clearly not intended to represent any dishonest fabrication of Kabbo’s social context, nor is it meant to idealize Kabbo according to the expectations of the public eye. However, does Nadar’s technique allow for Kabbo’s ‘inner’ being to be revealed in the photograph? It would be brave to respond positively to the question.

One could argue that the roles have now swopped. The public – still present in Kabbo’s portrait – has now adapted the role of image constructor. Susan Sontag states that however lenient the camera appears to be, it is also ‘...an expert at being cruel’. The public – in this case represented by both the photographer and the viewer, has managed to create a visual disinterest in the existence of the subject’s ‘inner’ being. The ethnographic nature of the portrait dehumanizes, typifies and categorizes the subject according to his raw physique, reducing him to the mere ‘fashion of a fingerprint’. It seems thus that even Nadar’s denuding of subject fails to expose its ‘inner’ being.          

In conclusion one could argue that the portrait - as public eye - either falsifies or obliterates the ‘inner’ being of the subject. Therefore, instead of becoming an expression of ‘inner’ being, it becomes rather a denial thereof. The obvious solution would be to remove the public from the equation and allow for the portrait to become a strictly private construction. This however would reject the portrait’s singular reason of being. In the absence of the public eye, the need for self-idealization would be inexistent. The public eye was the means to the creation of the portrait.  Therefore, the concern to express ‘inner’ being through portraiture should be replaced with the original reason of the portraits creation – as idealized interface between self-awareness and public expectation.      

Photography in South Africa: Pre- and Post Apartheid

From the 1980’s until the present there has occurred a significant shift in the subject matter and style of the South African photojournalism. The fluctuation of the political circumstance in country, during and after Apartheid, undoubtedly played its part in this transformation. However, one might wonder how much the photojournalist’s personal incentive influenced his stylistic transformation. More importantly, what consequences did these changes of style and subject matter have – not just for the physical image, but more so for the institutional space in which it was exposed as well as for the younger contemporary photographers? When the newspaper became disinterested, the gallery became interested and what occurred was a two-way compromise between photographer and institution.    

Eric Miller joined Afrapix in 1980 and became one of the first local photojournalist to document the struggle against Apartheid. Miller, together with photojournalists such as Paul Weinberg, Guy Tillim and David Goldblatt dedicated their careers to giving a voice to the victims of Apartheid in international media. These photographers used their cameras as weapons to fight against the Afrikaner Nationalist regime and to reveal the truth of what really happened ‘beyond the barricades’. As Miller explains “...going out there with my camera was a way of going to see for myself ...  to see the truth”. Miller published his work locally and internationally in news publications such as Time, New York Times, The Weekly Mail and New Nation. He also became a member of the news agency Reuters in 1988.

During the struggle Miller’s subject matter consisted of protests, shoot-outs, police raids, necklacings, forced removals and funerals - what in theory came to be known as ‘the aesthetic of flags and fists’ of photographs from the Apartheid era. This ‘aesthetic’ was a crucial requirement for all photographs aimed at making hits in the originally unresponsive, international news media. Images were explosive, action-packed and fast-paced with blood, dead bodies and guns making a frequent appearance. These photographs became the rescue material – the visual SOS signals informing an entirely oblivious international audience. This is what Paul Weinberg termed the ‘Then’ of photojournalism in the exhibition held at the Albany Museum in Grahams Town in 2007 discussing the stylistic transformation of photojournalists working in pre- and post-Apartheid South Africa. On 11 February 1990, the day Nelson Mandela was released from prison, was when this ‘Then’ became the ‘Now’ in local photojournalism – when the photojournalist’s subject matter crumbled together with Apartheid regime. Miller expresses what he felt during this part of his career:

It was quite a challenge to transform myself from being a news photographer ...to recording the slower, more human processes in the country.

In the following decade, Miller produced an entirely different body of work omitted of the horror and violence of previous years. This work rather concerned the more positive transformational processes occurring in South Africa at the time. He directed his attention to topics such as local health care and housing development, produced essays on subjects like women’s boxing and sangoma culture and applied himself to more educational purposes, writing articles and supplying photographs to publications like the Rhodes Journalism Review.

In 2003 Miller published a book with co-authors Görrel Espelund and Jesper Strudsholm.  For this project – entitled Reality Bites – Miller travels the rest of Africa documenting inspiring stories of individual Africans who have managed to advance in spectacular ways.  Aimed at reversing the view of the miserable African stereotype, this project revealed the more hopeful Africa. Amputee soccer in Sierra Leone; A children orphanage in Zambia and two ex-soldier Sudanese youth are just a number of the themes covered in this book. In the post-Apartheid years Miller thus abandons the ‘aesthetics of flags and fists’ from previous years, allowing for his photographs to adapt a more humanistic approach. These images are calmer, more sentimental and evident of a certain nostalgia. Unlike Miller’s struggle photographs – with their dictating, fast-paced messages - these images are permitted to resonate in the mind of the viewer as they page through the hopeful narrative of Reality Bites.

Three changes thus comes to be revealed in Miller’s later work:  Firstly, his subject matter has changed from politically motivated violence to humanistic representations of social transformation.  Secondly - without the immediacy associated with the former news photographs - the latter documentations were set in a less stressful working environment in which Miller had time to negotiate with his subjects allowing them to participate in the manner in which they are represented, as well as the time to consider his preferred technical and visual settings – whether this is composition, lighting, pose or background. And lastly, as consequence of the resonating characteristic of these photographs, the viewer has been offered a more respectful role in the ‘triangular relationship’ existing between subject, photographer and audience, demanding for him or her to form their own analysis of the image and accept its inherent ‘complexity and contradiction’. Therefore the viewer is given the chance to contemplate the image without being given immediate, prescribed readings such is was the case in Miller’s earlier news photographs.

With this in mind one can view Miller’s later – perhaps even more controversial – projects, with better understanding. Rebel Chic was an exhibition held at ART Gallery in Cape Town in 2007 displaying photographs Miller took of the Ugandan Resistance Army rebels. The photographs take on the form of portraits. With their cocky poses, flashy sunglasses, designer t-shirts and ammunition for props, the rebels seem to have played a big role in the creation of their individual portraits.  According to Art Times, Miller - by negotiating an intimate relationship with the rebels in order to convince them to pose for him – offers the gallery attendee ‘a peek into the curious rule of the jungle’. The democratic approach Miller adapts towards his subjects allows him to create a more humanistic portrayal of them, revealing to the viewer the manner through which these men cope with the dangerous environment they find themselves in.

Even though there evidently exists a stark stylistic contrast between the ‘Then’ and the ‘Now’ stages of Miller’s career, his commitment towards his subject has remained intact. Both phases speak of his inclination to help create and serve a better society – whether on political terms, such as was the case in his struggle photographs - or on social terms revealing the aftermath and recovery of political struggle and war - as is evident in his more contemporary work. Even though Miller’s post-Apartheid photographs fail to reveal any deliberate political proclivity, both collections are aimed at visually uplifting his subjects - always representing them as ‘rightful human beings’.

One can now understand why art historian Michael Godby so strongly opposes the assumption, that by migrating to the art gallery, the South African photojournalist has deliberately sacrificed photographic content for aesthetic values and as consequence has fallen into the trap of modernist objectification of the subject. Instead, he argues, the same commitment that fuelled their earlier work is still present in their contemporary, gallery-exhibited photographs, but that they have now been forced to adapt new subject matter that complies to a new institutional context.  Beauty – which has previously been regarded as opposed to any form of meaning making – has now been adapted by photojournalists like Miller as perhaps ‘the most eloquent vehicle they have’ to articulate their ‘urgent’ social message. Therefore, instead of compromising on content, Miller - by placing his works in a gallery – was able to reinsert his visual message into public rhetoric. The current media is hung-up with action.  Social messages like Miller’s do not reach the public eye through the media.  Therefore alternative routes - even if ethically perilous - had to be explored.

‘Committed art’ was the term used to describe the photographic material that entered the gallery in the mid-1990’s – an art that was neither centred around the photographer, nor the gallery itself, but rather focussed on the human subject and the act of public engagement. It could then be argued that, not only did Miller have to compromise in the form of stylistic change, but the art gallery also had to compromise its rigid principle of hosting purely modernist aesthetics. After 1990, South African galleries are said to have become much more receptive of the medium of photography, broadening its visual field from strictly fine art photography such as the work of Jo Ractliffe and Penny Siopis, to include more works of the newly introduced ‘committed art’.

The consequence of this stylistic and institutional transformation on the work of the young contemporary photographer is perhaps a somewhat blurred perspective of the practice itself. This is what artist Jo Ractliffe calls the ‘maddeningly awkward space between otherness and real, between art and documentary journalism’. Contemporary photographer Dave Southwood adapts exactly this photographic persona through his usage of a wide variety of styles and subject matter. Southwood shifts the focus of his camera back and forth between documentary material and fine art, sometimes even blending the two practices - similar to what was evident in Miller’s more recent work Rebel Chic.

After ten years of documenting the Milnerton Market, Southwood becomes an almost invisible presence on the scene. He succeeds in creating an intimate relationship with market authorities, product sellers and regular browsers, giving him access to the more intimate aspects of this strange cultural environment. The collection consists of portraits, group shots and still lives. His subjects participate in the project by designing their own poses and even writing their own captions to the photographs. In this way Southwood’s documentation – similar to that of Miller’s – adapts a democratic relationship between himself and his subjects. These photographs also serve as commentary on a certain local, cultural movement. It could be defined as a ‘study’ of the behaviour, habits and physique of a certain South African social ‘type’. With this in mind the photographs - aimed at being published in the form of a coffee table book - adapt an almost ethnographic character. Documentation and art – in their most vivid forms – merged together in Southwood’s photographs to create a unique body of ‘committed art’.

Southwood also documents sex workers in Swaziland, prisoner inmates at Pollsmoor and Valkenberg Mental Hospital patients for publications like the New York based Colors magazine. Colors is published in over 40 countries world-wide in four different languages. The magazine is aimed at introducing equality of cultures to the world by motivating discussion among young people of social themes that have been overlooked by mainstream media. It makes use of photography as its main tool for expressing these socially developmental ideals - regarding it as the most ‘expressive’ and ‘immediate’ medium to achieve its far reaching goal.

Southwood was also commissioned by social development magazine The Big Issue to do a documentation on the movement of supermarket trolleys in and around Cape Town. This project focuses on the extent to which consumer culture blends into the realms of normal city life, becoming an almost invisible extension of our everyday life.  By following in the tracks of the these trolleys, one is exposed to the varying and unbalanced social hierarchy of South African culture. From consumer driven city centres to the commodity deprived social peripheries, this culturally iconic object becomes a metaphor of the fragility of our capitalist society. This project – while still a documentation of social behaviour – adapts a more abstract character. It could be argued that this project almost oversteps the verge of popular art, calling to mind Andy Warhol’s 1964 exhibition The American Supermarket. 

‘Nothing in Particular’ was a solo exhibition – presumably one of Southwood’s most popular - held at the Bell-Roberts Art Gallery in 2002. For this exhibition Southwood presented a collection of ‘richly coloured and finely articulated’ photographs of iconic South African locations such as the Durban beachfront and the swimming pool at the Sea Point pavilion in Cape Town. At first the collection of images seems insignificant - almost quotidian.  The lack of commentary makes them seem even more irrelevant to the gallery context. What Southwood achieves however is to take his viewer on a – perhaps originally suspicious - trip down memory lane. Standing in front of the image the viewer might experience either nostalgia, sadness, claustrophobia or joyfulness depending on which memories these familiar locations call to mind. Southwood forces the viewer to enter into a memory play with the images, pushing him to confront ‘the conditions of his own existence’. By showing the present Southwood persuades his viewer to confront his past. One viewer remarked that the images reminded her of all the social institutions that categorizes South African society.

The title and subject matter of Southwood’s exhibition calls to mind some of David Goldblatt’s work, which Southwood agrees, was one of his leading inspirations. Since 1990’s, Goldblatt – also an ex-struggle photographer - has received great recognition from the art world for his projects on the ideological constructions of South Africa. Goldblatt documented South Africa’s political history by photographing its various architectural structures. ‘Structures’, he argued ‘declare quite nakedly...what manner of people built them, and what they (those people) stood for’. Goldblatt, could be argued, to have been the forerunner of the phenomenon experienced in the contemporary South African art world. He was the first to blend architecture and documentary - the merger of art and documentary journalism. Southwood’s work serves as proof of this statement.  In his exhibition ‘Nothing in Particular’ Southwood strictly follows Goldblatt’s example: He allows his viewer to reflect on and question the social conditions of his existence by exhibiting photographs in a gallery of iconic South African locations. A documentation of social circumstance through physical location. The perfect blend of documentation and art.

In conclusion it could be argued that Eric Miller and others alike, have - through their stylistic transformation – altered the way we look at photojournalism. They created a doorway through which documentary photography could enter the world of aesthetics. Photographers from the 1980’s have initiated a two-way compromise between the art gallery and the medium of documentary photography creating a unique style in South African photography – one that is stylistically flexible. By retiring from an uninterested media world and by adapting to certain aesthetic regulations, these photojournalists found an alternative route for reaching public rhetoric.  Photographers like Miller, Goldblatt and Guy Tillim have thus paved the way for the contemporary photographer like Southwood, to operate in an art world which is liberated from the extreme aesthetic divisions of the past. The contemporary photographer is now allowed to roam freely in the realms of the aesthetic world as ‘undercover’ mouthpieces for a healthier society.