Jurgen Schadeberg at the Durban Art Gallery
by Carol Brown
Jurgen Schadeberg, who emigrated to South Africa from wartime Berlin, has spent the last half century documenting South African society. He was one of the founder members of the now legendary Drum magazine whose photographs have become the source of intense study in the revisioning of South African history and art, with many recent exhibitions exploring this. This show, however, links to that publication only indirectly due to the fact that Schadeberg was influential in its production and also that his investigations of farmworkers commenced in 1952 when he and Henry Nxumalo (also a Drum staffer) started researching in Bethal where many of the labourers had been sold to farmers after being arrested under pass laws.
The farmworkers project has always been important to Schadeberg and in the introduction to his book Voices from the Land (also the title of this exhibition) he describes how it could not come to fruition for many years until African Philanthropies gave him the financial support to carry on with the project. This resulted in his travels all over the country together with a number of prominent South African writers - their aim being to create awareness of rural problems. The exhibition and text documenting this project are interdependent as the written information elucidates the shocking conditions suffered by the subjects.
While the photographs are strong enough to describe the human tragedy, the bare facts and figures provide vital information on the level of exploitation which still exists. It is astonishing to learn that people like Goliat in Sutherland work daily from 7am - 5.30pm, earning less than R2.50 for this, and yet remains grateful that his employer has never assaulted him and that his family gets free water, wood and food. They live in a spartan, three-roomed house with no electricity and an outside latrine. However they accept this as their lot in life.
This text and information is complemented by the image of Goliat and his wife standing outside the house which is a bleak and looming structure. They stand apart and are shown as two lonely figures casting long shadows in a wide, barren landscape where the photographer has subtly captured the fruitlessness and loss of hope in their seemingly insignificant lives. The interior shows them sitting passively and resigned in their lounge with cut-out magazine photos pasted on the wall behind them. These include a picture of the farm owner's son and the unattainable Princess Diana whose world was so far removed from their lives.
The photographs in the exhibition constantly juxtapose the land with the dwellings and their inhabitants. The way in which the South African landscape has been represented has been the subject of many studies over the last few decades. J.M. Coetzee discusses in White Writing how early representations of land were concerned with how the rough, untamed, stark landscape could be accommodated with ideas of the European picturesque with their emphasis on perspective and the proprietorial gaze of the viewer. Early visual artists in South Africa represented it as uninhabited from the perspective of same colonial gaze. South African art and photography have also placed great emphasis on early settler architecture and the splendour and richness of the farms, especially those like Groot Constantia which became one of our most famed images in architectural textbooks and tourist-orientated coffee table books.
Those luxurious glamorous dwellings however have always had their underbelly of human exploitation which has been ignored and swept under the carpet while the farm owners have lived off the fat of the land. It is well known that until recently 13% of the population owned the majority of the land in our country and recent attempts to reclaim ancestral land have met with stiff opposition and threats of eviction for many people who have lived for generations in certain areas. These issues are also examined in the book, while personalities are highlighted to indicate the inhumanity of the situation.
However the book/exhibition do not merely condemn. They also highlight success stories and show the positive side of many initiatives such as Green's Green Vegetable Farm in Meyerton, where owner Jill Green has introduced a programme using her land to assist the community who are affected by Aids. She has also put in place a powerful incentive-sharing scheme which has brought economic empowerment to many in the community.
We have recently seen legislation such as the 1997 Land Reform (Labour Tenants Act) and the 1998 Extension of Security of Tenure Act which aim to protect farm dwellers. The World Conference on Human Rights declared in Vienna in 1993 that 'to be persistently threatened or actually victimised by the threat of forced eviction from one's home or land is surely one of the most supreme injustices any individual, family household or community can face'. Recognition of these issues is therefore long overdue, particularly in the South African context, and the importance of Schadeberg's exhibition is in highlighting these previous injustices and drawing attention to them by the powerful and humanising eye of the camera.
The exhibition is on view at the Durban Art Gallery until March 24 and travels to Oliewenshuis Museum in Bloemfontein April 10.
Opens: February 14
Closes: March 4
Durban Art Gallery
2nd Floor City Hall, Smith Street, Durban
Tel: (031) 311 2264
Fax: (031) 311 2273
Email: strettonj@durban.gov.za
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