People Apart: Cape Town Survey 1952

This is a vitally important exhibition but one that is hard to review as it deserves a thorough understanding of the subject matter. 27 black and white photographs are on display, showing natural, unforced expressions on the faces of Black South Africans in Townships of the 1950’s.

Photographer Bryan Heseltine chooses a moment in time just before their communities are about to feel a further force placed on an existing segregation. At this time the Black South Africans do not enjoy total freedom of movement as they go about their daily business but Heseltine manages to capture normality in images such as ‘Barber Shop, Langa, Cape Town’. Langa is Cape Town’s oldest Black African Township mainly made up of single men housed in dormitory style barracks. This contrasts to the tin shacks of Windermere, another Township that Heseltine depicts, one that is known to be prone to flooding and tended to house the poorest inhabitants.

The geography of the shots follows the forced relocation of Black South Africans. To this end the functional and ordinary titles for the work such as ‘Unidentified Man, District Six, Cape Town’ become evocative and prescient. At the time of the photographs being taken in 1952 District Six is slowly becoming a white dominated area.

By photographing simple everyday moments this photographic display on the ground floor's Long Gallery represents a bigger picture of a nation. Viewers follow the corridor of this gallery to the very end as the show makes for compulsive viewing. Cape Town in the early 1950s is displayed as a place of rapid urbanisation and one that is affected by the National Parties acquiring power, extending existing segregation. By contrast, intelligence, thoughtfulness and beauty in the eyes of the subjects often provide pathos to the negative impact of forcible removal on their lives. The inner strength of the subjects sends a shiver to the viewer for the life that is captured here. The faces in the compositions are large in proportion to the background and appear full of the force of life. The square frame of the photograph edges borders them. No matter how big the emotions they feel inside, as a person they can only take up the space limited by a piece of photographic paper. The subjects cannot fill the space to their hearts content or even fill it with colour. Heseltine’s quality of monochrome paints the black and white system of Apartheid with more colour than any polychrome scheme could do.

The medium of black and white photography heightens the limits of unlimited resources forced onto a sector of society by politics. Whilst Heseltine completes this work 60 years ago the compositions feel contemporary in the subjects' lack of awareness of the voyeuristic camera. The quality of natural expression contained in the images brings the work alive. The genius on show in this exhibition is the trust Heseltine gains from the people he photographs. They let him into their world and their faces speak a truth now captured forever. We are all the richer for it.

Lita Doolan (DI Reviewer), 02/09/11

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