Belonging

This body of work investigate how politics, race, history and violence are embedded/layered within the South African landscape and how it reflects our historical and ideological subjectivities. Historically landscape in South Africa acted as a symbol of intimacy, a layered network of meanings and a place where cultural identity could be inscribed and imagined. I re-photograph and layer archival and present day landscapes in the darkroom, which results in a black and white photograph similar to the way in which landscape accumulates history and memory. I believe that traces are still present on the landscape, a landscape littered with political ideologies that inform our identities. This view would regard landscape conceptually – a space of shifts and changes rather than physical. Through this process I become an observer of these spaces/places, which stems from an archaeological desire to photographically scratch the surface of the soil for traces of the past, which in turn might act as a crucial marker to negotiate the future.