October 2, 2007
By Lesego Madumo
PHOTOGRAPHS documenting the daily lives of people living in three of Johannesburg's most poverty-stricken communities have been posted on the Shooting Jozi website.
The images were taken by ordinary people living in Alexandra, Diepsloot and Marshalltown in the CBD, under an Australian project called Global Studio. Run by Hugh Snelgrove from the University of Sydney, the initiative aimed to illustrate the surroundings and daily lives of ordinary residents.
More than 100 disposable cameras were handed out to more than 40 residents, who took photographs over four weeks in July, documenting their daily routines.
Snelgrove chose Jozi for his project after winning a scholarship from his university to participate in the Global Studio People Building Better Cities international design conference. It was sponsored by Fuji Film Australia.
Breakdancer: one of the photos from the website
The notion of the project, Snelgrove said, was inspired by the Academy Award winning documentary, Born into Brothels, which related the story of an American woman who introduced photography into the lives of slum dwellers in Calcutta, India, to enable them to tell their stories through pictures.
"I wanted to transport this model of working with a foreign community," Snelgrove explained.
Fresh perspective
By letting people document their lives, the project envisaged attaining "a fresh perspective of a people with close family ties and a rich cultural heritage, although they remained largely misunderstood and as yet underrepresented in the broader community".
"Ultimately, this project has helped a city to present its human face, better known for its propensity for hijackings and high murder rates than its thriving sense of community and extremely rich cultural diversity," said Snelgrove, the project's initiator and manager.
He hoped the photographs would help people to change their perceptions of Johannesburg and its inhabitants.
"All aspects of their lives were documented by themselves, including informal trading, where they play, places they hung out, things they‘d like to improve in their communities as well as cultural, political and social events."
While some participants chose to document an average day, Snelgrove said others saw the project as an opportunity to explore more "poignant subjects, hoping to raise awareness of the myriad issues still afflicting their societies".
Infrastructure, sanitation and pollution
In Diepsloot and Alexandra, issues like the lack of proper infrastructure and sanitation, and excessive pollution were documented. In Marshalltown, a single mother battling with cancer took photos of her daily struggle to draw attention to her plight, he explained.
Some photographers documented the "ironic contradictions" seen in the metro. "This included the tendency to spend more money on cars than on houses. It is common to see [luxury cars] parked alongside rusted corrugated shacks."
Through the project, Snelgrove noted, the majority of participants had "passionately voiced their sense of pride in and optimism for the future of South Africa and the opportunities it presented to them … This is despite the negative publicity Johannesburg receives as a city at the mercy of criminal gangs."
Speaking about the effect of the project, Snelgrove said: "For once outsiders have come into these communities and given something back. By getting [the] community members to document their own daily lives and the issues they face each day, as well as their efforts to rectify the status quo they find themselves in, we managed to restore a dignity and respect they have rightly deserved for a long time coming."
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