‘Shot in Jozi’ on show
THE underbelly of Johannesburg was exposed in Durban this week, at the opening of a collection by acclaimed photographer Graeme Williams.
On Wednesday, the KwaZuluNatal Society of the Arts Gallery hosted Williams, the third winner of the Ernest Cole photographic award, to launch his A City Refracted exhibition and LOOKING SNAPPY: Guest Given Radebe at the opening of ‘A City Refracted’ at the KZNSA Gallery book.
Not even hail could keep the city’s photography enthusiasts away.
Interspersed with members of the slops brigade were smartly dressed men and women in knee-length tweed coats, cigarillo pants, LBDs and funky head scarves.
Armed with glasses of red wine, a panacea for the chilly weather, it seemed, they huddled around the pictures.
From a nude woman posing on a bed at one of Joburg’s most notorious adult entertainment spots to a man taking a bath in a side street and a scene from a Brad Pitt movie shot in the city, the pictures proved interesting conversation pieces. Judith Shier and Jeremy Grest were suitably impressed. “We live near the gallery and are always on the lookout for something interesting,” said Shier.
It was a serious affair but Williams himself came casual in a hoodie and jeans.
Talking of the work, he said: “I had some hairy moments. Like the time I slipped onto the set of the Brad Pitt movie and stole a few shots. I was quickly escorted off the set by some unimpressed movie people.”
It took Williams three years to finish his innercity series, and he was often accompanied by bodyguards on night shoots.
“I didn’t only want to capture the bleakness, I wanted to show a beauty within,” he said.
Bill Freund, from the economic history department at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, opened the exhibition, calling it “a startling and fascinating collection”.
It was not only Williams’s work that turned heads. Guest Ian Dickinson with his waist-length dreadlocks drew attention, as did Mazisi von Eck, 8, who snapped guests with his little camera. “A City Refracted” is at KZNSA until September 27