Our friend Debbie Clark writes on behalf of her friend Anne Rearick,
“My friend Anne Rearick has 13 days left to raise the $17,500 she needs to publish her book of amazing photographs which document her visits to South Africa during the past 10 years. She is 3/4 of the way to her goal. Perhaps the good folk at GMG would share her project to support Anne’s efforts? Btw: she is the wife of local musician Willie Alexander, a teacher and an amazing photographer. Thank you for your help. Best, Deb.”
Your support will help me raise money to fund a 160-page book of photographs that celebrates the spirit and strength of South Africans who face endemic violence, extreme economic hardship, and racism that has not abated, while all the time maintaining dignity, hope and courage.
I have been working as a documentary photographer for nearly thirty years. Over the past decade I have photographed life in the townships of Langa, Khayelitsha, Philippi and Mitchell’s Plain outside of Cape Town, South Africa. My work there began during a Guggenheim Fellowship year for my exploration of the culture of amateur boxing. During my trip, I met people living in Langa and Khayelitsha and began photographing the Luvuyo Boxing Club in Khayelitsha. I felt uncomfortable as yet another white person with a camera, photographing people with less resources and access to power. Subsequently, I cut my trip short, unsure of the work I was doing and who would actually benefit from it. Upon my return to the States, I looked at the pictures I had made and decided to go back to learn more, to further explore post-apartheid life in black communities. After over a dozen trips and more than a thousand rolls of film, I began to believe that the pictures mattered-they were not about people as victims, or about poverty, or any of those things one imagines life in black South African townships to be.
Outside the cities frequented by tourists and business travelers, in vibrant townships, I found beauty and strength and all the contradictions of being human in the people I photographed; a preacher testifying to his rapt congregation; a couple’s loving embrace at day’s end; the proud regard of my friend Sindi in her traditional Xhosa dress; the moving funeral of a young Sotho man; the poetry and grace of a girl dancing on a warm Sunday afternoon; and the striking face of “Dream Girl,” a young woman studying to be a traditional healer, a “sangoma.”
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