'Cities in Crisis' at FADA Gallery, University of Johannesburg
by Landi Raubenheimer
The 'Cities in Crisis' exhibition at the FADA Gallery, University of Johannesburg (UJ), ran concurrently with a recent three day colloquium entitled 'Johannesburg and Megacity Phenomena' hosted on the University's Bunting Road Campus. 'Cities in Crisis' boasts work from prominent South African photographers, such as David Goldblatt, Guy Tillim, Jo Ractliffe and Sam Nhlengethwa. According to curators Dave Southwood and Michael Godby, the exhibition aims to represent a range of photographers, to investigate distinct parts of South African cities and to represent a range of experiences of urban life. It makes sense to ask, which parts of the city and whose experiences? The issues of spectatorship and territoriality are underpinned by the power implicit in the subject position filled by the photographer and the spectator, and larger urban class structures that dictate notions of belonging and territory.
Within a gallery space there are set conventions that dictate how a spectator should view artworks. The camera also lends itself to such conventions. As documentary medium, photography often struggles with its modernist label of 'objectivity'. Even the most critical photographers may battle with the objectifying distance engendered by the lens. In this context Goldblatt's Remains of households in a children's game called onopopi... (2006) is engaging and subtly subversive. The foreground is extensive and detailed, which has a peculiar effect on the spectator's vantage point. One sees immediately a view of the ground at the photographer's feet, and a view of the horizon stretching into the distance. The even distribution of sharp focus is uncanny, and because perspectival distance is distorted, aesthetic distance also tends to collapse. Goldblatt's subject matter is everyday, but his photographs do not allow the spectator to feel secure about the situations he depicts.
Southwood's Victoria Mxenge Township, Cape Town (2001) is less conscious of the relationship between its subject matter and spectators. It is difficult not to be charmed by the multi-coloured quilt that is the township landscape. While this photograph does convey the immensity of informal populations and unemployment in South Africa, it inevitably aestheticises these phenomena, distancing the spectator comfortably from the difficulty of the subject matter. The relationship between the gallery spectator and the subject matter is determined by who fills the subject position, which here seems closer to that of a tourist than artist/viewer.
Nhlengethwa's collage No dumping area, Western Cape (2006) represents another tourist view of township life. There is movement and colour, but notably there is also distortion. The medium of collage has been theorised by Lyotard and other thinkers around the avant-garde, as expressions that highlight discrepancy rather than present the viewer with resolved statements. As such, Nhlengethwa's work becomes a marker for what is perhaps not supported by the tourist flavour of the subject matter of some work on exhibition.
Marcus Neustetter and Stephen Hobbs raised the notion of belonging in their paper for the colloquium entitled Hobbs/Neustetter: Urbanet: Hillbrow/Dakar/Hillbrow. Their field research lead them to an encounter with immigrants in Hillbrow, who warned them that walking in that part of Johannesburg with a camera was not safe. This good practical advice to two white men in a dangerous part of Johannesburg, underlines the tension between socio-economic hierarchies in South African society, and the act of photography as spectatorship. If looking is asymmetrical in terms of power relationships, where does the balance of power lie in relation to the marginalised urbanity that dominates the subject matter in most of the photographs on exhibition? Many of the beautifully exotic images represent regions of the city where gallery visitors dare not venture. As a view in, these images are windows, but as such they are themselves complicit in maintaining barriers of belonging in urban environments like Johannesburg.
Jean Brundrit's work, A walk around the block with Goliath (2003), addresses this issue in an unexpected manner. Rather than the brave flâneur-photographer of ravaged city streets, a pet becomes the narrator of her series of photographs. This severely framed series of smaller images tells the banal story of walking one's dog. The photographs document each of the other dogs encountered on the way, all fenced in, and presenting themselves variously in gestures of animosity or tolerance. The edgy narrative communicates a great deal about the territoriality that urban environments necessitate. Fencing is a veritable phenomenon in suburban South Africa, and further enforces the demarcation between legitimate urban development and 'informal' development.
Ractliffe's layered exposure panorama shots, from the 'Johannesburg Circa Now' exhibition in 2004, negate the distance engendered by the gallery and the camera in a very sensitive way. At first glance they seem facile, but they are in fact very intimate representations of pedestrian city life. Ractliffe presents the viewer with multiple glimpses of the environment, incomplete, inconsistent, and insubstantial. Her use of smoke, steam and reflections make for images that are nuanced without being sentimental. Photography is a medium that wields a lot of power, and those who photograph must guard against the transparency of this power. It easily translates itself into the conventions implied in the act of spectatorship. Ractliffe's documentary of Johannesburg streets is seen through the subject matter, and encourages the viewer to look from within the photographs, rather than at the striking decay they may portray.
'Cities in Crisis' is a rich document of urban South Africa. Photography is a medium that is both problematic and useful in the hands of artists who examine different areas of urban life through various points of view. As such this exhibition offers both unself-conscious and self-reflexive moments of tension in its collective depictions of urban communities. There are views into situations that a spectator may not otherwise encounter, but also views from within such situations, that are less comfortable. The exhibition highlights the act of looking and the notion of belonging in a society that remains dramatically socio-economically stratified.
Landi Raubenheimer is a Johannesburg-based artist, independent writer and lecturer at the Design Centre in Greenside
Opens: April 10
Closes: May 9
FADA Gallery
University of Johannesburg, Bunting Road Campus, Auckland Park
Tel: (011) 559 1393
Email: leoraf@uj.ac.za
www.uj.ac.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 3pm
