I did not take these photographs.

My father took them in 1986 whilst working as an aeronautical engineer for the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). They form part of a study my father undertook that resulted in a presentation to a number of NASA scientists at the Supersonic Tunnel Association in Missouri, USA. Taken in a High Speed Wind Tunnel using a standard camera and a Shadow Graph photographic technique, the study identifies the previously unexplained effects of shockwaves on missiles at different air speeds in a test environment. My father solved the mystery. These images, along with the scientific paper they formed part of were stored in his darkroom. They are the only surviving copies. The CSIR destroyed vast amounts of such research as part of South Africa’s return to the international community.


My father introduced me to photography as a young child. He trained me in the technical qualities of the craft. To my father, the quality of an image was more related to focus, grain and exposure qualities than the likes of composition and concept. I would of course rebel against this and from an early age produced imagery that purposefully pushed aside the documentary quality of an image in favour of the “interpretive” aspect of photography. Twenty years later my father has long since retired, and my work is published as art. It sells for unexplainable amounts of money. It hangs on walls as part of corporate collections.

My father and I often discuss photography. He is part of an amateur photographic club that has artful rules that guide people up a ladder of “success”. I sense a tangible frustration on his behalf with this scenario. The intent with which he captures his images is not congruous with such a system. So I introduced my father to the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher. I loaned him my books on Thomas Struth and Andreas Gursky. Whilst appreciative, he finds these works mildly amusing. He observes that Struth’s single-mindedness deserved little and got little until he printed his works ultra large. He points out the formalistic effect of the grid-like presentation adopted by the Bechers, who were so intent on casting art aside in favour of documentation. I find it difficult to argue. And, without him realizing, he has taught me my most valued and ironic lesson in photography.

A good photograph is a penetration into a place that is real and true - and a photographer’s search for profoundness invariably erodes the true value of the work itself.

A unique opportunity arose in the form of this project. With my father’s permission, I was able to enter his images as art, albeit that they were captured with no such intent whatsoever. I pulled them from his darkroom. I scanned them in their original plastic mounts as they were presented in 1986 without removing dust or ageing defects. They are what they are.

And they are beautiful.

Flesh & Bone is a photographic essay on interpersonal relationships. Images are arranged in sets of two or three to create short poems which are enhanced
by the dynamic between images on the page. Please view them as two page spreads. These are simple stories, exploring reoccurring patterns in human existence.

I take the role of the partial observer, watching from behind my camera. People remain anonymous yet visible. The subjects are survivors in simple, ongoing, internal battles.

Though my technique may first be perceived as strictly reportage, I sometimes use constructed situations, computer manipulation and selective burning and dodging techniques to skew the viewers perception, creating scenes that are at the same time real and fabricated.

Located just South of Underberg in the foothills of the Drakensberg in KwaZulu-Natal, Reichenau Mission was founded in 1886 as the first daughter station of the famed Marianhill Monastery near Durban. The Trappist Monks of Mariannhill designed Reichenau along the lines of a Central European Benedictine Village centred around a Neo-Gothic church decorated with beautiful murals and richly coloured stained glass windows. In keeping with the principle of self-sufficiency that forms the cornerstone of the Trappist doctrine, the buildings erected around Reichenau Mission included school, mill, butchery, bakery, forge, store and fully functional farm. This allowed the Mission to successfully co-exist with its environment independent of the outside world.

However, time has been kind neither to the Trappist Order nor Reichenau Mission. The pressures of modern life have rendered the ideal of living in splendid isolation from the outside world practically impossible: even though the Reichenau Mission Church still stands as a tribute to its builders, its purpose as the spiritual heart of the community has all but disintegrated. This situation is poignantly reflected in the deleterious condition of the interior of the church whose decaying visage is the sine qua non of an icon locked in the interstitial between defiance and despair. The myriad incarnations of Christ on the cross seem to see the Saviour more downcast than ever and, even though the ancient pump organ still works, the emphysematic wheezing of the bellows all but drowns out the sound of the music.

The school still exists but the mill, bakery, forge and other fixtures of the mission are broken and deserted. The Reichenau Mission community appears to occupy a similarly tremulous link between past, present and future, evoking Gramsci’s timeless observation: “The past is dying, the new cannot be born and in the interregnum a variety of startling symptoms appear”.

At a first glance these familiar landscapes evoke the old South African landscape paintings of the “ Cape School” of 1800’s. But a closer look reveals different visual layers and the images become more complex. There are hints of painted backdrops, fake rocks and in places glimpses of reptiles. We are looking into the little vacuumed landscapes behind a layer of glass in the National History museum world.

Daar is ‘n slang in die gras (there is a snake in the grass) is an old Afrikaans idiom, which suggests that there everything is suspiciously not as it seems.
In a subtle way, it is a commentary on the South African historical landscape – a fabricated world for display that was irrevocably treacherous.

The images have a serene painterly quality with an uncanny eeriness that makes the viewer engage and became wary at the same time.

Credit: Iziko museums, Cape Town.

This series of images represents my permitted entry into a yard late last year. I was seeking familiar terrain in my still new residence in southern Idaho. With winter fast approaching, I was examining my perception of my new surroundings in connection with the memories of season’s change and home.

As I explored the garden, I shot digital images with a shallow depth of field. I was considering the abstraction of focus and how an audience will attempt to define the unclear details from memory. Conflict and emotional tension rose up with contrasting hues. The lines throughout the compositions I found described intersections and new boundaries throughout.

By the intermixing of branches and colliding stems, these images remind me of my own displacement. As I review how I documented the plants’ changes, I consider how moving hallmarks new transitions. Wholeheartedly, the abstracted images and crossing lines helps define the multiple influences of previous residences and the influence of a new address upon one’s evolving perspective.

All My Life I’ve Had the Same Dream is a collection of images and experiences of a journey that is both anoymous, one we have all had and can relate to, as well as one that is deeply personal and unique. Each image, each experience is defined, motivated and explores the dream-dreams that have failed, succeded, what has been sacrificed in order to achieve these dreams, what has been lost, nightmares and fantasies, day dreams and how we escape this life through our dreams. My subjects reveal themselves as they share their dream through the camera lens.

I am not a photographer; I am a visual artist working predominantly in sculpture. While I hold considerable deference for the medium of photography, I view my practice of it solely as one of several means to manifest my imagination. These six images are neither evidence for a particular case nor the products of any plan, but are instead fictional narratives accompanying a series of sculptural works I have produced over the past few months. I will now briefly describe their production.

The Master
This photograph features three works I made this year – the wooden mask of Hu Jintao (President of China); the ‘Ghillie suit’ and the AK-47 assault rifle. The Hu Jintao mask was carved from an existing Okuyi mask I bought at a market in Johannesburg for R 400.00. The ‘Ghillie’ suit I bought online from a U.S. military supplier in Utah for R 780.00 – this is a standard issue tactical marksman suit issued to all infantry snipers and spotters within the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps. The AK-47 was made from a plastic toy I bought for R 75.00 – which I then aged with sandpaper and carved the wooden elements from pine timber, gluing them to the plastic gun with epoxy. The person in the photograph is my girlfriend’s parent’s gardener. His name is Main Road Ncube and I paid him R 100.00 for a three-hour shoot.

The Classicist
This photograph features a prostitute I paid R 300.00 for a 40-minute photo shoot at my apartment. I found her in a local newspaper under the ‘Adult Entertainment’ listing and called her the same afternoon to book her. Her name is Gisele, she is 26 years old and is from Nigeria. The large wooden ruler to Gisele’s right is a work I started several months ago, and to the left is a sculpture made of foam titled “The Economy of Modernity”.

The Good Student
The rifle shown in this photograph is one I made from component parts between March and June 2007. I bought the deactivated bolt action from a gun shop for R 1800.00 – it is a 30-06 Mauser issued in Leipzig, Germany in 1942. On the bolt action was a serial number 423~829 and next to it a small swastika had been stamped into the metal. The noise suppressor was bought at a second gun shop for R 200.00, as was the telescopic sight which cost R 380.00. The wooden stock I carved from a piece of Oregon pine and was treated with shoe polish, cigar ash, enamel paint, oil and a blowtorch.

The Gift
This photograph is of a former teacher in his workshop in Durban. This man is 60 years old and has lived in Durban for 36 of those years. The object covered by the blanket is his lawn mower, his son wrapped the mower and took the photograph following my instructions delivered over four emails. This photograph is the final version of nine options he emailed to me over three weeks.

The Time
This photograph is of the three sculptural works I have mentioned already, namely fake the AK-47 assault rifles. My girlfriend’s parent’s gardener shown in the first image is seated on the left, next to him are his two sons, Nicholas and Silas. I paid them R 100.00 each for a three-hour shoot.

The Orientalist
The last photograph in the series is of myself seated in one of the built-in cupboards in my apartment. In front of me is a four-year-old Apple PowerBook I borrowed. It is resting on my laundry basket. This is the third time I have photographed this image.

I want these photographs to offer six ordinary moments that you might recognize and enjoy.

To see and feel clearly the ordinary moment requires an artless art. To think (or talk) too much about it is no good. I go about with a camera looking and I wonder if this or that might be the ordinary moment that will speak to me through a photograph. I wait for a moment that will stick to me. Very few do.

The risk for the fisher of ordinary moments is that the pictures will be limp or “uninteresting”. Ordinary moments do not do well in “schools” or movements or other trappings that might announce their importance or provide a handle for responding. They do not enjoy the quick response of an arch irony or extraordinary event.

When an ordinary moment opens into a way of finding beauty in the every day walk-about world, it marks a kind of truth – or perhaps merely a gesture towards a truth. That is what I want these six photographs to do.

These six photographs were taken this year as I went about my daily routines within a couple of square miles of my work and home.

The way we manipulate our surroundings and how surroundings reflect upon us creates interesting narratives – it gives an insight into the human condition.

Why we do the things we do fascinates me as I believe this lays bare the contradictions and idiosyncrasies within us. It’s something that can’t be explained by reason alone but needs to be intuitively understood. I’m drawn to situations that don’t quite make sense, but which I feel compelled to try and unravel.

Lake Trees: 2004-2006

My father wasn't a conversationalist. Maybe that is why I remember his comment of how all that one needed to happy was to have a tree with generous limbs to sit under. I was probably about 9 years old then and I knew having a tree to climb and hide in was all I needed! Years later I still think about trees and the metaphors they have provided of life and its mirrors. Throughout history, literature and painting have depicted the ever changing language of landscape. With appreciation of this tradition, it is the tree that I have chosen to study. It is the intimacy of being in the presence of trees, their rootedness that keeps me exploring their nature and form.

These 6 images are part of a book project begun in 2004 They are from 2006 during my third winter visit to the edge of Lake Zurich.

For the nearly 75 years that the Battersea Power Station has occupied the site it has been the source of much controversy.

Since its conception in 1929 it has alternated between being the oppressive icon of industry and the great benefactor, providing heat and light to London.

Today it is unsure what is in store for this monument, with a number of failed proposals and massive public interest. What remains true is the massive presence that this building has in the city; whether it is seen or unseen, it certainly remains felt – and this set of photographs aims to show just how great a presence it is.

The following images catalogue how a small community exhibits, records, and experiences history. Mamaroneck, New York, is a village on the Long Island Sound, founded by Jonathan Richbell at the onset of the New England colonial charter boom of the 1660s. Throughout the past three centuries, Mamaroneck has experienced the gamut of the American experience. These images show a much narrower selection of 'facts' giving the mundane the same historic weight as 'significant history.' These images are a study in Historiography, examining how history interpreted, recorded and eventually formed into a local collective perspective of the past. The evenhanded presentation of interpreted and formal 'exhibitions' and 'events' are exhibited as the work of a careless curator, showcasing the unedited material from which our history is culled.
In this project, different observations have been evenhandedly presented as 'history,' giving self-conscious historical participation and the recording of contemporary events the same historic weight. The juxtaposition of 'Participation (March)' and 'Historians (Local Newscast)' shows two modes of historical engagement, one involving youth in a vague and inaccurate presentation bygone era, the other creating a record of the present for the future.
The term 'exhibition' is also loosely used. In 'Exhibition of Local Architecture' we see a formal exhibition hand crafted models of significant buildings in the village, from the banal local funeral home to the fascinating 'World's Thinnest Home.' 'Etymology of the Word 'Mamaroneck' (Land of the Rolling Rocks)' is a playful interpretation of one of the three assumed meanings of the village's name.
In short, these images are humble observations of the historical experience; they are presented together in order to illustrate the organic formation of a particular community's collective conscience of the past. As a whole, they could serve as an allegory for the American experience.

"All Photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth." - Richard Avedon

Traditional portraiture does not reveal an individual's personality, but only catches a fleeting aspect of that person in a particular setting at one particular moment. People are far more complex than a single shot. This series is my first attempt at a kind of panoramic portraiture. The purpose of these constructed compositions is to convey a more nuanced impression of an individual's nature by photographing successive moments and presenting them as an amalgam, creating a single, more truthful photograph.

I asked everyday people who had little or no experience with being in front of the camera to be models. I selected the act of undressing, but I gave them the choice of which items to divest in order to promote and showcase the personal differences between individuals; some people were shy and conservative in what they would take off, while others stripped down with ease.
Nudity is not the objective of this series. Instead I explored and documented how the process of undressing outside of conventional times and places is a vulnerable act that lays down guards and masks. It is the emotion (or lack thereof) and body language disclosed to the viewer that is highlighted.

Although some might believe that digital editing dilutes the art, in this case the model is not touched. They are who they are - beautiful in their humanity - and technology is only used to complete the portrait and make them more real.

Architects obsess with buildings’ facades. They are designed, crafted, and ornamented to form an acceptable public face. Conversely, service areas are left naked – functional clusters of guts that provide electricity, water, data and conditioned air, and dispose of waste. Wherever possible, they are hidden.

There’s something intriguing about the parts of buildings that aren’t supposed to be seen – the zones where these structures plug in, live and breathe. In an urban landscape increasingly preoccupied with hiding ‘ugliness’, this is perhaps the most honest part of a building.

These images were taken in Budapest, Hungary and Johannesburg, South Africa.

It is part of the human condition to embellish the space we inhabit. Even the most humble dwellings contain countless expressions of the innate desire to balance physical comfort with an aesthetic display of some kind. Apparently trivial visual elements of any home are actually the deliberate choices of the people that live there. While the preference of any person is usually determined by the historical and cultural era they happen to live in, within those restraints human individuality finds expression. Sometimes a whisper, sometimes an ear splitting scream, every domestic or commercial environment is ultimately a message communicated to the world in bricks, glass and paint.

The resources and creativity of the people living there also regulates the material expression of these domestic messages. Paradoxically, relative wealth is often a constraint to individual creativity. The more consciously a person participates in consumer culture, the less likely they are to resist conformity. This is especially true when it comes to the choices they make about their homes. The richer people become, the more they rely on the price of their possessions to distinguish themselves from others. Of course there can be little doubt that less affluent people would festoon their houses with the trappings of prosperity that litter the pages of professional décor guides and ‘lifestyle’ magazines, if only they could afford it.

Instead, humble folk take inspiration from the world around them and articulate their own interpretations of space, both domestic and commercial. Being economically disadvantaged, people are forced to draw on their own resources of creativity and supplement these with whatever materials they can find, to cobble together their message to the people. These communications are delivered in complex languages of personal code and meaning, impenetrable to outsiders, but delivered with such force that they cannot go unnoticed.

Landscape has for a long time been the primary focus of my artwork. The landscape for me is a place of presence—a perceptual field that anchors a sense of basic existence. I have never been interested in just showing particular places in a literal sense, but rather in creating images that, while retaining a direct connection to what was photographed, present their own experience of looking and perceiving. These images are from an ongoing body of work exploring complex connections between perception, photography and place. I purposely avoid monumental and recognizable sites, choosing to photograph anonymous and mundane locations, so that each space can be encountered freshly and directly, and so the experience of looking at the print allows for a process of discovery. Each image functions as both a perfect window onto the world and as a self-contained perceptual experience. The act of seeing is the true subject of these photographs.

Our approach to art production, the art world and our own collective role as a singular artist is characterized by a strong sense of humour and a punk sensibility. Our production focuses predominantly on conceptual art manifest through photography and performance. "A sincere act to invent something insincere", is probably the most succinct definition of our method.

While the media showed southern Africa's leaders congratulating each other in Lusaka this month, hundreds of refugees from Zimbabwe's economic and political disintegration were gathered night after night in downtown Johannesburg, crowding the halls and stairwells of the Central Methodist Church.

The Church has been a nighttime haven for Zimbabwe's castoffs for years. While their story is well known to journalists, it appeared to be an ideal vehicle for documentary photography : a challenge to the hyperactive metabolism of the deadline-driven mainstream media, in, simply, getting involved, and being able to build a narrative.

This set of images required finding a crossroad of stereotypes and universal situations -- the leader, in his tailored suit, contrasted with the faces of the impoverished masses, for instance--. I tried to create an equal tension between the photographic moment, the reality and the narrative, which would give some legitimacy to my work.

The rules of classic European theatre resonated best, in this specific case, to represent in a synthetic way reality and intentions. Those rules can be stated in one word, unity.

Space Unity: In a single place, all and each bodies and souls were in movement in one lively place.

Time Unity: Time to create familiarity can be measured in nights. The storytelling cancels this measurement. The place imposed its own time, it inhales and exhales in an everyday, clock-like routine, night after night.

Action Unity: Preserving the anonymity of my subjects was a difficult decision to take. I realized that all of them -- all of us -- are carried in the current of history. If the titles describe different movements in time and space, much like the Latin declination of a verb, the energy of those people's lives is dedicated to the search for a better life.

We are all migrants in our own way.

In late summer, this untamed forest houses the wind and the monster-like outline of kudzu vines drape against the sky. As the seasons shift to autumn, the creeping plant sheds its leaves, opening up the entangled mass and allowing sound to travel through effortlessly. Rain soaks into the decomposing leaves and the newly opened space invites me in to dwell amidst its rich musky scent. The now dormant trees sit quietly awaiting the crisp winter air.

Each time I visit my childhood home it feels as if I’m trapped somewhere between the past and present. It’s like walking into your own personal museum where spaces, objects, distinct times of the year and season are deeply saturated with layers of meaning and history. Some specific associations can be recalled vividly, but others blend into each other to form an ever-growing, shifting cloud. On the surface things appear the same as they always have, or do they? The sun shines through the window the same way around 8 o’clock in June as it did when I was a kid. But was that hill always there? Was this tree always that tall? Discovering and rediscovering things I may have overlooked or taken for granted at other times in my life, I am constantly reminded of the mystery and uncertainty that can be found in the so-called familiar. It is the feeling of walking through this lucid dream created of both past and future memories that stays with me when I’m back on the train, leaving home again.