Newsmakers captured in black and white, a visual historiography, and persevering historic icons, subjects and individuals who have played a part in our society.
These expressions sum up the exhibition titled Names in Uphill Letters at Pretoria Art Museum by photo-journalist and writer Jacob Mawela.
Exhibits include photography of icons such as Desmond Tutu, Brenda Fassie, Benny McCarthy and Hugh Masekela. The exhibition will run until June 5 and includes a walkabout with Mawela today.
Mawela said the motivation for the project was to preserve some of South Africa’s historic moments, individuals and subjects.
He used Fassie as an example, explaining how the younger generation might not have any idea who the legendary musician was.
“This is me playing my part in preserving the history of South Africa. Brenda Fassie may be gone, but she remains part of South African history.”
In a statement, the City of Tshwane described the exhibition as the dispensing of visual literacy among the country’s millennials, who had fallen into the trap of the polarisation of the pre-1994 past of their parents’ generation.
“Mawela, through the privilege of personal access to his subjects, delved into the personas behind individuals who made headlines and some still making headlines.
“Included among his subjects are also names not precisely cloaked in glory, but as the scholar in him asserts, he did not embark on his project as a judge of man, but rather as a roving eye merely fascinated by human nature,” the statement read.
Mawela said the black and white and colour in the photography was inspired by the transition of photography to colour.
“In the days of Sophiastown, people used to be photographed in black and white as colour was yet to be introduced in photography.
“I named this a historiography of South African newsmakers, because newsmakers can come from any part of society, whether a singer, a sports star, a scientist, a writer and so on.”
Mawela said there are 108 photographs as part of the project, with the exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum being Part 1; an exhibition will be held in Johannesburg as Part 2.
Mawela’s selection of newsmakers entails 27 A2-sized monochromatic images as Part 1. They are documented on Ilford HP5 film, a medium widely used in the press industry in the early 1990s when Mawela began his journalistic career.
Mawela’s favourite photo exhibited at the museum is of singer Dolly Rathebe standing next to a car with cars behind her.
“It was taken in Soweto in the 1950s.”
A graduate of Unesco's International Programme for the Development of Communication, Mawela began his journalistic career after being invited for an internship at The Star newspaper's award-winning photography department by its then chief photographer, Ken Oosterbroek, in March 1994.
In 1996, he accepted a photographer's position at Drum Magazine, where he worked until 2002 before becoming a freelancer.
Pretoria News