A soul full of broken glass
These two pictures, taken more than 50 years ago by Billy Monk, will be on display for the first time next month, alongside 26 others from the era. Craig Cameron Mackintosh, curator of the collection to be exhibited at the Cape Town Art Fair, said: “These images have never been seen before. They have literally been locked in a trunk for 50 years. They cast light not only on the past, but also the present. How, for instance, people dressed smartly to go to a club. But perhaps the biggest surprise is that, in the dark night of apartheid, there were chinks of light where all races got together, something Billy’s photographs bear witness to. It was like a third space where outies felt at home.”
Monk worked as a bouncer in Cape Town in the 1960s and took photographs of club clients to pony up some extra cash. His studio was The Catacombs, a tawdry nightclub with coffin-shaped tables, raffish clients, port-city opportunists, prostitutes, pickpockets and pimps — a multicoloured mix that kicked a hole in the walls of apartheid.
Monk’s photographs had a shoot-the-lights-out rawness. They were taken with a coarse expertise that contrasted sharply with the petri-dish colonial refinement of Cape Town. He had, like Diane Arbus, great authority within the frame. He had a way of moving with his camera along the cutting edge. There was no flab, no space, no pretension. In a way his photographs — like his life — were flashes of opportunism. Like Man Ray in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century, he just happened to be the right man in the right place.
Many people in Cape Town knew Monk by sight but when I was involved in planning his first exhibition in 1979, he had disappeared. People said he had gone fishing. Then he was found in Port Nolloth, where he was working as a diamond diver. But Monk never lived to see his work displayed publicly. He was shot dead in a boarding house, trying to protect a friend who’d got into a fight over some furniture.
After his funeral, people remembered him as “a character”. They remembered him as a musician.
They remembered him as a man who wanted many women, who could change a baby’s nappy and swing a powerful left hook; a man who could read John Steinbeck deep into the night and a man who could make you cry. They remembered he was seldom on time, and sometimes didn’t arrive at all. The people who said the worst things about him still liked him.
“Billy,” said a man who worked with him for years, “was a small-time crook. He would do anything to survive. He was always looking for an edge.”
Monk joined the Cape Town underworld, where men were called Babyface and Sneaky Pete, where there was always somebody who could play the piano like Brubeck and payment was strictly cash. He learnt to work the system.
In the early days he tried safe-cracking. The first big job was an OK Bazaars branch, but the safe wouldn’t open so they took it with them. When they got out of the lift, the police were waiting with guns. Monk came out with his hands up, the way he later died. During the trial, it was thought at one time that he would go free, but he stood up and said: “I did it.”
In the two years he spent in prison, Monk learnt elegant, archaic copperplate handwriting. His photographic negatives were marked and crossreferenced in this gentleman’s script.
Later, he made a living poaching crayfish. But he got careless and got caught. A nightclub owner said: “Billy was a crook. OK, so I liked the guy, but he wasn’t even a very good bouncer. A good bouncer doesn’t need to half kill someone.”
Monk’s long-time friend Derek Lyons disagreed. “Billy was a sweet and gentle person,” he said. “He was always late and he could be violent, but his heart was in the right place.”
It was with Lyons that Monk was one day going to buy a boat and they were going to sail away.
Monk was buried at sea. Even as a corpse draped in a black cloth (which a woman would later clutch around her shoulders to keep out the cold), Monk was the outsider, the rough diamond, the primitive, the man who gave it to you straight. Though his soul was full of broken glass and despite his low-rent background and time in prison, whether by circumstance or deliberation he was able to capture people’s fantasies and hopes in a unique manner at a unique time.
Over the years, Monk’s photographs have caught the eye of many people, from academics to singer Jack Parow to celebrated photographer David Goldblatt. They all believe that the key to the pictures’ authenticity was trust. His subjects performed for Monk. They cried, kissed and laughed out loud and were sometimes so smithereened with brandy and Coke they fell over. They trusted him because he was not a voyeur; he was one of them.
“He might have been one of them but it has everything to do with the empathic power of the man himself,” said photographer Chris Ledochowski.
Art critic Ashraf Jamal is jubilant in his praise of Monk: “He is the most vivacious and life-engendering photographer I have come across. His photos are the best living imagery in this country, the most human in the purer sense and for that reason I think he is SA’s most significant photographer.”
Back when he was taking photographs at the Catacombs nightclub, Monk said to a friend: “You’ll see — I’ll make it in photography. They’ll be talking about my photographs long after I’ve gone.”
There was no flab, no space, no pretension. In a way his photographs — like his life — were flashes of opportunism
The Investec Cape Town Art Fair is at the International Convention Centre from February 15 to 17. For the full programme visit investeccapetownartfair.co.za.