Emile Ebrahim Kelly

Took a 5×4 field camera out to Hackney Marshes last Sunday, heres an image:

Gerry, Referee - Hackney Marshes, 24/01/10

Parts 1 & 2 of a quality 4 part series on BBC World Service, looking at the history of football in Africa. I found the political links particularly fascinating, lots of high profile African Nationalist figures gained experience in organizing/running football teams, so it’s no surprise that football would take center stage as African countries first started to gain independence. The stories of Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghanaian Black Stars and Algeria’s FLN team, both formed in the late 50’s, are especially interesting. The Black Stars drew 3 – 3 with European champions Real Madrid (Franco’s team!) in 1960 and Algeria’s National football team existed before the Nation gained independence from France! Featuring some of the best players in France  and acting as a key vehicle for spreading the message of Algeria’s plight. Click the “read the rest of this entry” (below Kwame) for links

Kwame Nkrumah on a Soviet postage stamp

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Enter the darkness:

Roger Ballen: Lens Culture Conversations with Photographers from Jim Casper on Vimeo.

My first trip out to South Africa is booked for March 25th. I’ll be in Cape Town til the 5th, when Josh joins me, then we’ll be road tripping it North to Jo’Burg and flying back from there on the 19th. We’ve got two little projects planned, the first is a series of portraits of young footballers, taken as we travel from South to North. The format of these images will remain the same; posed on the halfway line of a football pitch, the idea being that the portraits also act as landscapes, and the landscape will change as we travel. Rineke Dijkstra’s beach portraits (below) are a big inspiration for this.

Rineke Dijkstra - Coney Island NY, USA, 1993

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I let the blog slip towards the end of my last project, but I’m back on it now and ready to get some work done after a pretty lazy Christmas/New Year period (I ate more than you, trust me). The final point I took that project too was quite a chaotic wall based installation that was a portrait of my Dad through photographs and documentation, both personal archive stuff as well as official state documentation (passports, ID’s etc). It focused on and highlighted his life between South Africa and Britain and how this has shaped his identity. I had intended to bring this blog up to date with that project by somehow making a digital version of the installation, I didn’t do that  but hopefully ill find the time at some point because I was quite happy with the work in the end, although there’s definitely room for much more development. I suppose that’s going to be true for any 10 week project. Anyway, the big news is that I managed to get my first 2 trips out to SA booked, one in March/April with my brother from another mother Josh and one solo trip in June for the World Cup. Big plans for both, post about the first trip coming later today!