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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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