Backing township photographers
Steve Kretzmann
28 February 2005
Township photographers in Cape Town are hoping to break into the mainstream with the help of a new non-profit organisation.
After moving to Cape Town from London after 15 years as a successful freelancer, Alistair Berg said he was struck by the scarcity of images by black South African photographers.
He said he knew there was a rich vein of local photography kick-started by Drum magazine in the 1950s and carried forward by photojournalists working against apartheid, but that he could not find much that was contemporary.
"I found township artists selling their work in tourist craft shops, but the only photography I found was by foreigners or white South Africans", Berg says.
"I knew there must be talented photographers out there in the townships whose work could sell in this tourist market. But I knew they would face big obstacles in getting it together."
With the help of the organisers of the Cape Town Month Of Photography,
Berg got in touch with the Umlilo photographic group based in Langa. Together, they have established a non-profit organisation called Impilo Yethu to help photographers develop and manage a portfolio of images that can be sold through various outlets.
Berg spoke to "as many shops as possible", and all agreed that positive images of township life, taken by people who lived there, would sell very well.
Impilo Yethu aims to build up a portfolio of images by a broad group of photographers, giving them the opportunity to create a regular income from the continual sale of their work.
This will also allow them to extend their creative abilities "without worrying so much about what their family will have to eat", says Berg.
A major obstacle for township photographers, says Berg, is the price of film for traditional cameras. Because of this, struggling photographers were very conservative, shooting only one or two frames of a subject, not wanting to waste film by
exploring it thoroughly.
To overcome this, Berg advocated the use of digital cameras so that photographers could take as many pictures of a subject as they liked without spending any extra money.
Lower-end digital cameras are also becoming more affordable, some costing as little as R1 000 to R2 000.
Impilo Yethu also aims to set up a digital resource centre for photographers at the Guga S'thebe multi-purpose community centre to enable photographers to download and print their images.
Berg says there are about 10 photographers so far with about one saleable image each; the group will need "about 50" images in total to get the ball rolling.
A percentage of all work sold will be fed back into the project to facilitate workshops and resources.
Umlilo founding member Warren Nelson says Berg has "added new energy" to the group.
Umlilo, started about three years ago, conducts workshops and tries to develop a culture of photography, but always has to
"start from scratch" to raise funding.
Now, says Nelson, the project is more self-sustainable, allowing the photographers, who rely on social events for an income, to extend their portfolios to more creative and artistic images.
Impilo Yethu will host a workshop on digital photography at Guga S'thebe as part of the Cape Town Month of Photography on 3 March. About 100 photographic prints produced by Umlilo photographers will be on show.
Source: BuaNews
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