This is my buddy Greg. Him, another friend Craig, and myself went out shooting B&W film in downtown Johannesburg.
I love to go exploring the city on quiet weekend mornings such as this. There's a wonderful calm to a place that is usually very, very manic. Johannesburg, if you have never been there, is a very unusual city. It was a bustling hub of commerce and industry until about 25 years ago when all the big companies decided it was no longer safe and enticing for consumers and workers and so they all relocated to the place where the wealthy lived: the suburbs. This, coinciding with the social and political upheaval of the dying years of Apartheid, left the city run-down. There were huge pockets of squalor and the city became a dangerous, dark, off-limits place.
In the last decade, all that is changing. It's still a place that is in need of a lot of love but there has been a resurgence of companies trickling back to the city and vibrant, exciting developments and refurbishments. It is becoming a place for the people again and not just the poor and desperate.
It is invigorating to walk these streets and see people setting up their informal shops selling food and goods on the side of the road in the early morning. It is exciting to experience a place that was in many ways inaccessible to a great many people for so long.
It makes me a proud South African to be living in a time when the city is returning to its former glory, This is a country of tremendous spirit and staying power. It's quirky, different and energetic.
I love to take pictures of it. I love to document it's resurgence, I love being a part of it.
Photo taken with a Ricohflex VII on Ilford FP4 125 B&W film.
Labels: Black and White, Environmental Portrait, Film, Portrait, Scenes of the City
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