Lindokuhle Sobekwa
‘I had been focusing on Thokoza for a long time, and I wanted to move out of my comfort zone. I thought of Daleside, because my mother had been employed there as a domestic. When I was growing up, I’d help my mom out; maybe do the garden or help in other ways.
We weren’t allowed to go inside the house. I was always curious as a kid as to what was inside. I didn’t look at it as racism back then, but more like: “What are they hiding from me?”
So when I went there as a photographer, with my friend Cyprien Clément-delmas, with whom I collaborated on the project, the camera became a “passport” to see, intimately, the daily lives of the people.
In our first year of going to Daleside, no one wanted us to photograph them, so we had to think of a different approach. We started going to the church, and gained the trust of the pastor and he started introducing us to the community.
Even then, there was still a dynamic of suspicion; of people thinking the black guy walking around the neighbourhood is a criminal. Sometimes they would confuse me with someone looking for a job.
The camera always saved me in moments such as those. But slowly, we connected with the people of Daleside and were able to portray intimate moments.
With different bodies of work, especially this one, I spent a lot of
time getting the relationships right and showing my subjects the images (it took us five years to produce the book), but my approach to the work itself is always simple.
I use one camera and one lens (a 35mm), which allows me to be closer to the people I’m taking photographs of. You still want a certain amount of distance, but you have to be able to
sense that closeness. The intimacy between myself and the people I photograph is important, no matter how far I’m positioned.
Compositionally, I always pre-visualise
a moment. So it boils down to selection. Whatever is in that image — it doesn’t matter how big or small it is — it’s always important for it to be there.