This set of photographs came out of a huge and ridiculously heavy book titled “NATAL”. They seem to document someone’s journey across Natal (or KwaZulu), although there’s no information about who that might be. What grabbed me was simply the craft involved, the prints in the book were of such high quality and the composition of some of them is awesome; there were certain photographs that reminded me of Joel Sternfeld. I had to make a massive on the spot edit because the book was so large that the scans cost about 6 times what I was expecting. Unfortunately, when the CD with the scans arrived, certain images I was sure I had chosen weren’t on it. There was one in particular that sticks in my memory: a landscape in a park or botanical gardens, with a small white boy standing awkwardly staring into the camera, it was very strange. Which was what i like about the images, clearly they don’t do much to break from typical colonialist photographs, but they had this strangeness to them. I don’t know if the selection I’ve ended up with here really gets that across though. Thoughts?
Click the images for large versions, the scans don’t really convey the initial impact of seeing the prints, but its important to see them in as much detail as possible.
"Field of Pineapples"
"Town Hall. Pietermaritzburg"
"Coffee Trees"
This guy appeared in a few of the photographs, my guess is he’s a plantation owner. Very odd the way he’s emerging from those coffee trees on his horse.
"Ready for War", "Zulu Policeman", "A Zulu"
