Category Archives: photography

waiting to exhale

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*.* Love’s Secret Domain, 2004. Self-portrait manipulated with MS Photo Editor.

“I think,” Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, “that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn’t do. All that I might have been and couldn’t be. All the choices I didn’t make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven’t been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed.”

~ Ursula K. Le Guin – from The Dispossessed

seaside towns they forgot to bomb

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14 September 2005 – 01:59

Aah, Sea Point. Maybe it’s just the pheromones, or the exhaust fumes, or the soupy mist of oil from cheap takeaways, or the blinking lights, relentless through the fishy smog… Maybe it’s the conglomeration of them all… The whole place reeks of overtiredness.

Main Road, Sea Point. Photo: Rosemary Lombard

Main Road, Sea Point. Photo: Rosemary Lombard

Know how the Durban beach front feels at night? All sodium glare and humid candyfloss and hooting and “Rayban” pushers, stumbling over sprawling elephantiasis limbs; cabbagey piss and rotting elephantiasis limbs underfoot at every turn, elephantiasis limbs EVERYWHERE?

Or the water slides in Muizenberg? Ice-cream sticks and rusty fish guts and cocoa butter thick in your nostrils? Shrivelled, orange bikini grans and stubbed toes and burnt children scrambling back up, over and over, getting their money’s worth, with fresh snot to add to the circulated stream? Kinda like that.

Like a casino, or a circus, or the school parking lot half an hour before the last night of the end-of-year play. Just like that. The cement, the tar etched with residues of action, the erratic paths of people hopscotching between the pavement’s wet patches of unknown origin, beat-up cabs snaking through the gutters, cruising for someone going somewhere, doing something… you never can be certain what.

There’s an interminable vacancy in all the hyperactivity, a loneliness. A sense that most of what’s done is probably being done to keep up appearances, because it’s in the script. In bar toilets, in sighing lifts and entrance lobbies of peeling flats, people wait, unexpectantly, for something undisclosed… The sour gaggles of Jewish crones… The sweet fags in the coin-op laundrette… The salty dog walkers on the promenade… The makwerekwere… The goosefleshed trannie under the stop sign… LCD Jesus loves you, 01:31, 8°C.

It’s a frustrating place, a titillating place for anyone with even a pinch of the voyeur in them. You never know if today will be your chance to be privy to that something, to overhear the deal… Well, it’s hardly likely to be above board, is it? You daren’t blink in case you miss it, yet you virtually never get to see the loops close, experience the denouement. And your imagination goes crazy.

Oy vey, it’s a schande. Happeningness rubs your nose in it, but, from a distance, it’s too pungent, too slippery to pry open cleanly… You know your conjecture’s amusing but empty.

Romanticism breeds covetousness, even of the sordid. So, you’ve read Burroughs, Bukowski, Genet, Sade. Ballard, Palahniuk, Sartre… Your own illicit missions never feel as archetypal.

It’s like being hopelessly in love, but not being in ’40s Casablanca, you know? Like rainbow soap bubbles popping on your tongue… The bath gets cold before you stop being too distracted by the froth to immerse yourself fully.

jarvis cocker – sheffield sex city (lyrics)

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Sea Point Main Road, 7 January 2013. Photograph: Rosemary Lombard

the city is a woman, bigger than any other…

…the sun rose from behind the gasometers at six-thirty a.m.
crept through the gap in your curtains
and caressed your bare feet poking from beneath the floral sheets.
i watched it flaking bits of varnish from your nails
trying to work its way up under the sheets.
even the sun’s on heat today;
the whole city getting stiff in the building heat.

now i’m trying hard to meet her but the fares went up at seven
she is somewhere in the city, somewhere watching television
watching people being stupid, doing things she can’t believe in
love won’t last ’til next installment
ten o’ clock on tuesday evening
the world is going on outside, the night is gaping open wide
the wardrobe and the chest of drawers are telling her to go outdoors
he should have been here by this time, he said that he’d be here by nine
that guy is such a prick sometimes, i don’t know why you bother, really.

oh babe oh i’m sorry
but i had to make love to every crack in the pavement and the shop doorways
and the puddles of rain that reflected your face in my eyes.
the day didn’t go too well.
too many chocolates and cigarettes.
i kept thinking of you and almost walking into lamp-posts.
why’s it so hot?
the air coming up to boil; rubbing up against walls and lamp-posts trying to get rid of it.
old women clack their tongues in the shade of crumbling concrete bus shelters.
dogs doing it in central reservations and causing multiple pile-ups in the centre of town.
i didn’t want to come here in the first place
but i’ve been sentenced to three years in the housing benefit waiting room.
i must have lost your number in the all-night garage
and now i’m wandering up and down your street, calling your name, in the rain
whilst my shoes turn to sodden cardboard.
where are you? (where are you?)
where are you? (where are you?)

i’m still trying hard to meet you, but it doesn’t look like happening
‘cos the city’s out to get me if i won’t sleep with her this evening
though her buildings are impressive and her cul-de-sacs amazing
she’s had too many lovers and i know you’re out there waiting
and now she’s getting into bed; he’s had his chance now it’s too late
the carpet’s screaming for her soul, the darkness wants to eat her whole
tonight must be the night it ends
tomorrow she will call her friends and go out on her own somewhere
who needs this shit anyway?
and listen, i wandered the streets the whole night crying, trying to pick up your scent
writing messages on walls and the puddles of rain reflected your face in my eyes.
we finally made it on a hill-top at four a.m.
the whole city is your jewellery-box; a million twinkling yellow street lights.
reach out and take what you want; you can have it all.
gee it’s so hot tonight!
i didn’t think we were gonna make it.
it was so bad during the day, but now i’m snug
and warm under an eiderdown sky.
all the things we saw:
everyone on park hill came in unison at four-thirteen a.m.
and the whole block fell down.
the tobacconist caught fire, and everyone in the street died of lung cancer.

this is what democracy looks like

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My cousin Paul Davey is a Zimbabwean-born photographer, writer and graphic designer living in London. Growing deathly bored with commercial shoots, he found renewed inspiration by getting onto the capital’s streets and shooting 40 000 protest photos last year. He put them into the book This Is What Democracy Looks Like – a chant frequently heard at protests – resulting in a lively collection of images of people, protests and events from 2012 in London, particularly the Occupy movement.

It’s essentially a book of portraits, portraying the often eccentric, artistic and highly intelligent protestors, and it offers a glimpse – usually not shown by mainstream media – of who they are, what they believe and the events they are caught up in, as they try to change the world in which they live.

Civic protest is definitely alive and kicking in good ol’ Blighty, and the reader will gain some insight into how their system attempts to control uprisings. Our South African police could learn a thing or two from the British bobbies – for instance, they employ a technique called ‘kettling’ in which they surround the crowd of dissenters, with the police linking arms, and contain the protestors until their bladders are full and their steam cools off.

Paul also interviewed many of the people he shot; you can read the interviews on http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/paul-davey/. Here is a sample, from a man known as Dom.

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First Name: “Commonly Known as Dom”

Age: 37-ish

How long have you been in the camp? I first visited St Paul’s four days into their process.

What were you doing before you joined the Occupy movement? I was trying to live outside the system of control. I was living in the wild in the hills of Wales. I came here to Babylon from nature. Three years ago I was doing a law degree, but left that. It was the system and I didn’t want to be part of it.

Are you a full time resident in the camp? No. I’m not resident of anywhere I park my body. I live outside the system of control, outside of the others’ world.

Do you have a specialist role in the camp? I speak my truth.

What compelled you to become an Occupier? Staying in the ‘now’ brought me here.

How will you as an individual make a difference? By sharing my knowledge, because knowledge has value and [through knowledge] becoming rich in friends.

Who is your Enemy Number One? The Tavistock Institute and Common Purpose.

Who do you admire? Everyone. Everyone has something that makes them special.

Why? We can all learn from each other. If only we could all see each other as teachers.

What is the best part of being in Occupy? To expose Occupy for what it is. Exposing the orchestration.

What is the worst part? Occupy is a leaderless movement but there is a hidden hierarchy trying to control others. It is like a [government] social experiment.

Is Occypy making a noticeable difference? No. It is not here for that. It’s a social manipulation experiment.

Why? It has Common Purpose facilitators and Tavistock Institute workshops.

Anything else? The donation money was going the Climate Camp. The legal team, which claims to represent all of us, is self appointed. In fact all the leadership is self appointed.

To purchase the book This is What Democracy Looks Like visit http://www.blurb.co.uk/bookstore/detail/3901497

face of democracy

john berger – “les petites chaises”

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Do you think that flying round repeatedly in a circle, as happens on a certain kind of roundabout, do you think this might have a temporary effect – for purely physiological reasons – on the brain?

It can induce a sense of giddiness…

I mean more. Could character temporarily be changed by it?

Please explain, said Monsieur Hennequin, what you have in mind.
swing

At these fairs there is a special kind of roundabout, a combination of a roundabout and a series of swings. The seats are suspended and when they turn –

A centrifugal force comes into play, said Monsieur Hennequin, and they are thrown outwards. I have seen the kind of which you are speaking. We call them les petites chaises.

Good. Now you can control – up to a point – how you swing outwards and in what direction. It’s all a question of how far you lean back, how high you push your feet up, how you swing with your shoulders and how you pull with your arms on the chains either side. It’s not very different from what every girl learns on an ordinary swing.

I know, said Madame Hennequin.

The game which most of the riders play as soon as the roundabout starts to turn, is to try to swing themselves near enough to whoever is behind or in front of them so as to join hands with them and then to swing together, as a pair, holding on to each other’s chains. It’s quite difficult to do this, often only their fingertips touch –

The seats are spaced in such a way, interrupted Monsieur Hennequin, to ensure that they never come into contact. Otherwise it could be dangerous.

Exactly. But everyone who rides on this kind of roundabout is transformed. As soon as it begins to turn and they begin to gain height as they swing out, their faces and expressions are changed. They leave the earth behind them, they throw back their heads and their feet go up towards the sky. I doubt whether they even hear the music which is playing. Each tries to take hold of the arm trailing in front of him, they cry out in delight as they gather speed, and the faster they go, the freer they play, as they rise and fall, separate and converge. The pairs who succeed in holding on to one another fly straighter and higher than the rest. I have watched this many times and nobody escapes the transformation. The shy become bold. The awkward become graceful. Then when it stops most of them revert to their old selves. As soon as their feet touch the ground, their expressions again become suspicious or closed or resigned. And when they walk away from the roundabout, it is almost impossible to believe that they are the same beings, men and women, who a moment ago were so free and abandoned in the air.

~ from G by John Berger (1972)