THE RMD COLLECTION > SLOW WITNESS
The beginning of a new direction. Work in progress. Time will tell if I can manage to achieve what I hope I can achieve with this project I call the Soliloquist.
Borderline South Africa
South Africa’s 3500km long and convoluted border line, which straddles the Indian Ocean from Kosi Bay on the East coast to Alexander Bay on South Africa’s cold Atlantic West coast, wanders diverse landscapes, cuts through socially complex and disparate communities, and demarcates where the developed super power economy of South Africa ends and the ‘rest of Africa’ begins. It could be construed in some ways as the gateway to Africa. Beit bridge the border crossing over the Limpopo river, between South Africa and Zimbabwe is the busiest land border on the continent.
My chance to wander this front line as a photographer, Alexander Bay to Kosi Bay (Manguzi) and back again, for 6 weeks on assignment for GEO magazine, has prompted me to present a limited edition series of images taken on this 11 000km journey. These images help me reflect upon this demarcation in the sand. This fence line. They are a kind of visual debriefing.
A lot of how the map of Southern Africa looks today is a result of how colonial South Africa evolved and subjugated its own people and neighbours. Much of that fenceline is written in blood.
GEO MAGAZINE. Question and Answer time with Olivia Sedaner.
1) How was this idea born to do a report along the north borderline of South Africa ?
The borderline idea came about if I remember correctly during the Xenophobia attacks that happened in South Africa in 2008. There was a violent backlash against African immigrants living and working in South Africa by (black) South Africa's who blamed them for stealing their 'jobs'. The majority of the victims were Zimbabwean and Somalians, who comprise the largest numbers of African immigrants in South Africa. Many of them arrive via Beit Bridge, the border post with Zimbabwe.
For nearly a month rampaging black South African's stoned, knifed, shot at those they deemed to be 'outsiders'. It was a time of national crises, and forced many people to consider the implications of ever increasing numbers of foreign nationals arriving in South Africa, applying for political asylum. Also defining who were political and or economic migrants.
That was the debate too...who deserved political asylum. Who should be deported as merely opportunity seekers. Also the political and social meltdown in Zimbabwe was driving thousands of desperate Zimbabweans across the border into South Africa. That was the conduit I think for proposing this idea to Jean Luc Marty. Yes the South African border with Zimbabwe was definitely the coduit.
Both JC and I saw this feature initially as a hard hitting geo political story, but both GEO magazine and also we the authors realized that the border was a multi-faceted subject, and therefore decided to widen our focus to include the diverse geographical and social richness of the subject. Make it more of a travel story that a hard hitting investigative piece.
2) As a South African citizen since 1975 and having realized numerous reports all over his large territory, you know South Africa very well. Did you discover any new things about the country and what was for you the biggest surprise ?
I have travelled extensively in South Africa over the years, so yes I could say that I had travelled the lenght of South Africa, but what appealed to me about following the land border was that I had a chanced to wander the country across its width. The breath of South Africa. Along its widest point. From edge to edge so to speak. I've often ruminated over the fact that the two bays, Alexander Bay on the cold, sand blasted Atlantic coast, and Kosi bay on the warm tropical Indian ocean sit on almost the same longtitudinal line, but are literally miles apart (approx 2000km) and worlds apart in terms of geography, flora and fauna and social ethenicity. There are probably few other 'bays' in one country that could be so different.
It was watching this gradual metamorphosis as I travelled the borderline that left an impression on me, and of course trying to understand the geo political, social, ethnic, geographical complexities of this convoluted fenceline that instills in me a desirre to return again and again.
3) Investigating about illegal border migrations and trafics must have been particularly hard. What were the biggest difficulties you encountered during your reporting ?
Yes, we had difficulties. The South African Police, border post officials and South African Customs and Excersize personnel refused to cooperate with us at all. Without credible accreditation and authorization letters (which we would not have mananged to secure even with months of preparation) we were shackled in terms of getting access to all the freight search and border patroling that is part of SA border story. It's is the movement of people, transporting legal and illicit goods across South Africa's border which is such a big part of the borderline issue. Drugs, human trafficking, cross border prositutes travelling clandestinely with the long distance truckers, cross border stock (animal/wildlife) theft, and of course cross border wildlife poaching, especially rhino poaching are hugely complicated issues to investigate and certainly document. So for the most part I certainly as the photographer had to think of ways or aspects that I could control in terms of photography.
Examples of this came through befriending a truck driver and an ex policeman in Mussina to help me get pictures of prostitutes at work around the truck stops on the South African side of the border, and the illegal fence jumpers, that daily cut holes in the razor wire & electric fence erected on the Beit Bridge, side of the Zimbabwe, South African border.
Mussina is really the 'hottest zone' in the entire borderline story in terms of legal and illegal activities, and I/we (JC Servant) knew we had to invest a good percentage of our time in Mussina making contacts and defining two or three subjects that would speak volumes about border life. Border issues. Borderlanders. Those that profiteer from living on borderlines!
4) On the border, this in-between-worlds where the realities of both countries are confronting, with more or less violence, you met people who clearly regret the end of the apartheid. Did you know the existence of this endemic racism in this place before your report and do you think that this situation could change in a near future or the relationships between Black and White people are becoming harder and harder ?
Certainly the northern Province, that is the area of South Africa that borders on Zimbabwe, and to a lesser degree Botswana and Mozambique has always been regarded as 'Red Neck' country. Game ranches (wildlife) and hunting lodges abound. Killing animals for fun is the domain of a certain type of person, and those that partake in the sport and provide the facilites and animals to be killed are predominantly of white stock. So too are the hunters both domestically and from abroad. I tend to think that anyone who enjoys killing for fun is going to be biased towards a certain conservative view point and certainly those individuals I photographed living in Mussina and involved in hunting were very quick to lambast the black government and those 'unwanted' immigrants from across the border.
So too many of the agricultural farms in these areas are white owned and there has been plenty of bad press, endorcing the knowledge that these farmers abuse and exploit desparate Zimbabweans and other foreign nationals, who arrived in South Africa feeling tyranny and hunger. There are glaring examples of cyclical patterns of racism, abuse, retribution, hate, anger, distrust on all sides of the ethnic diaspora that is South Africa, and how it deals and realates with its own people and it's neigbours. I tend to think that the history of South Africa has to many degrees been a timline of one tribe pitted against another, and of intertribal violence and plunder, South Africa is a multi-faceted mozaic of ethnicity and it's regional ambitions too as a modern nation are still to a large degree colonialist. Today outh Africans are blatantly buying up large tracts of Mozambique, to use for their own gain. This is a glaring example of contemporary colonialism under the guise of South African development and cooperation! I think it will be a long long time before South Africa is a nation of stability and peace, and gains true trust and respect from it's neighbours.
5) You also met tribal people who are living on each side of the border, in a great poverty, and are gradually loosing their ancestral customs, lost in alcohol or drugs. Have you felt that it was the end of a world or would it be a hope for them to survive and keep their way of living ?
I guess onew thing that this trip instilled in me was just how much political boundaries, drawn up by 'colonists', have to a large degree played havoc on communities and or 'tribes' that were divided, and separated by these 'border' lines drawn in the sand.
One shining example of this were the communities of San (bushmen), Mier, Nama, Khoi, Baaster decent, torn apart when the fence lines between South Africa and Botswana were literally drawn in the sand of the Kalahari desert, the sacred hunting ground of the bushman people.
Through discussions with members of these disparate communites, scattered both sides of Nossob & Aoab rivers, the natural demarcation line between South Africa and Botswana, bushmen elders and other individuals brought it home to me the absurdity of the concept of national boundaries. Certainly in a place like Twee Revieren or Two Rivers. For who could blame them for illegal fence jumping, when they could almost shout across to their extended family, uncles, nephews, sister and brothers who were living literally less than 0.5 km away on the other opposite side of the demarcation line (a strip of barbed wire fence and a dry river bed) and yet to vist them, they had to travel 25km down to the border control post on the South African side, and then 25km back up the road in Botswana. Totally crazy!
It's really the first time I've seriously considered the true implications of defining South Africa's borders. Any border for that matter.
6) You said that you would like to investigate further on the subject of the South African borderline. Which is the subject that you would particularly develop in a future report ?
1) How was this idea born to do a report along the north borderline of South Africa ?
The borderline idea came about if I remember correctly during the Xenophobia attacks that happened in South Africa in 2008. There was a violent backlash against African immigrants living and working in South Africa by (black) South Africa's who blamed them for stealing their 'jobs'. The majority of the victims were Zimbabwean and Somalians, who comprise the largest numbers of African immigrants in South Africa. Many of them arrive via Beit Bridge, the border post with Zimbabwe.
For nearly a month rampaging black South African's stoned, knifed, shot at those they deemed to be 'outsiders'. It was a time of national crises, and forced many people to consider the implications of ever increasing numbers of foreign nationals arriving in South Africa, applying for political asylum. Also defining who were political and or economic migrants.
That was the debate too...who deserved political asylum. Who should be deported as merely opportunity seekers. Also the political and social meltdown in Zimbabwe was driving thousands of desperate Zimbabweans across the border into South Africa. That was the conduit I think for proposing this idea to Jean Luc Marty. Yes the South African border with Zimbabwe was definitely the coduit.
Both JC and I saw this feature initially as a hard hitting geo political story, but both GEO magazine and also we the authors realized that the border was a multi-faceted subject, and therefore decided to widen our focus to include the diverse geographical and social richness of the subject. Make it more of a travel story that a hard hitting investigative piece.
2) As a South African citizen since 1975 and having realized numerous reports all over his large territory, you know South Africa very well. Did you discover any new things about the country and what was for you the biggest surprise ?
I have travelled extensively in South Africa over the years, so yes I could say that I had travelled the lenght of South Africa, but what appealed to me about following the land border was that I had a chanced to wander the country across its width. The breath of South Africa. Along its widest point. From edge to edge so to speak. I've often ruminated over the fact that the two bays, Alexander Bay on the cold, sand blasted Atlantic coast, and Kosi bay on the warm tropical Indian ocean sit on almost the same longtitudinal line, but are literally miles apart (approx 2000km) and worlds apart in terms of geography, flora and fauna and social ethenicity. There are probably few other 'bays' in one country that could be so different.
It was watching this gradual metamorphosis as I travelled the borderline that left an impression on me, and of course trying to understand the geo political, social, ethnic, geographical complexities of this convoluted fenceline that instills in me a desirre to return again and again.
3) Investigating about illegal border migrations and trafics must have been particularly hard. What were the biggest difficulties you encountered during your reporting ?
Yes, we had difficulties. The South African Police, border post officials and South African Customs and Excersize personnel refused to cooperate with us at all. Without credible accreditation and authorization letters (which we would not have mananged to secure even with months of preparation) we were shackled in terms of getting access to all the freight search and border patroling that is part of SA border story. It's is the movement of people, transporting legal and illicit goods across South Africa's border which is such a big part of the borderline issue. Drugs, human trafficking, cross border prositutes travelling clandestinely with the long distance truckers, cross border stock (animal/wildlife) theft, and of course cross border wildlife poaching, especially rhino poaching are hugely complicated issues to investigate and certainly document. So for the most part I certainly as the photographer had to think of ways or aspects that I could control in terms of photography.
Examples of this came through befriending a truck driver and an ex policeman in Mussina to help me get pictures of prostitutes at work around the truck stops on the South African side of the border, and the illegal fence jumpers, that daily cut holes in the razor wire & electric fence erected on the Beit Bridge, side of the Zimbabwe, South African border.
Mussina is really the 'hottest zone' in the entire borderline story in terms of legal and illegal activities, and I/we (JC Servant) knew we had to invest a good percentage of our time in Mussina making contacts and defining two or three subjects that would speak volumes about border life. Border issues. Borderlanders. Those that profiteer from living on borderlines!
4) On the border, this in-between-worlds where the realities of both countries are confronting, with more or less violence, you met people who clearly regret the end of the apartheid. Did you know the existence of this endemic racism in this place before your report and do you think that this situation could change in a near future or the relationships between Black and White people are becoming harder and harder ?
Certainly the northern Province, that is the area of South Africa that borders on Zimbabwe, and to a lesser degree Botswana and Mozambique has always been regarded as 'Red Neck' country. Game ranches (wildlife) and hunting lodges abound. Killing animals for fun is the domain of a certain type of person, and those that partake in the sport and provide the facilites and animals to be killed are predominantly of white stock. So too are the hunters both domestically and from abroad. I tend to think that anyone who enjoys killing for fun is going to be biased towards a certain conservative view point and certainly those individuals I photographed living in Mussina and involved in hunting were very quick to lambast the black government and those 'unwanted' immigrants from across the border.
So too many of the agricultural farms in these areas are white owned and there has been plenty of bad press, endorcing the knowledge that these farmers abuse and exploit desparate Zimbabweans and other foreign nationals, who arrived in South Africa feeling tyranny and hunger. There are glaring examples of cyclical patterns of racism, abuse, retribution, hate, anger, distrust on all sides of the ethnic diaspora that is South Africa, and how it deals and realates with its own people and it's neigbours. I tend to think that the history of South Africa has to many degrees been a timline of one tribe pitted against another, and of intertribal violence and plunder, South Africa is a multi-faceted mozaic of ethnicity and it's regional ambitions too as a modern nation are still to a large degree colonialist. Today outh Africans are blatantly buying up large tracts of Mozambique, to use for their own gain. This is a glaring example of contemporary colonialism under the guise of South African development and cooperation! I think it will be a long long time before South Africa is a nation of stability and peace, and gains true trust and respect from it's neighbours.
5) You also met tribal people who are living on each side of the border, in a great poverty, and are gradually loosing their ancestral customs, lost in alcohol or drugs. Have you felt that it was the end of a world or would it be a hope for them to survive and keep their way of living ?
I guess onew thing that this trip instilled in me was just how much political boundaries, drawn up by 'colonists', have to a large degree played havoc on communities and or 'tribes' that were divided, and separated by these 'border' lines drawn in the sand.
One shining example of this were the communities of San (bushmen), Mier, Nama, Khoi, Baaster decent, torn apart when the fence lines between South Africa and Botswana were literally drawn in the sand of the Kalahari desert, the sacred hunting ground of the bushman people.
Through discussions with members of these disparate communites, scattered both sides of Nossob & Aoab rivers, the natural demarcation line between South Africa and Botswana, bushmen elders and other individuals brought it home to me the absurdity of the concept of national boundaries. Certainly in a place like Twee Revieren or Two Rivers. For who could blame them for illegal fence jumping, when they could almost shout across to their extended family, uncles, nephews, sister and brothers who were living literally less than 0.5 km away on the other opposite side of the demarcation line (a strip of barbed wire fence and a dry river bed) and yet to vist them, they had to travel 25km down to the border control post on the South African side, and then 25km back up the road in Botswana. Totally crazy!
It's really the first time I've seriously considered the true implications of defining South Africa's borders. Any border for that matter.
6) You said that you would like to investigate further on the subject of the South African borderline. Which is the subject that you would particularly develop in a future report ?
The bottom line for me is that this trip I took with Jean Christophe along the border made me realize just what a big story the SA border is, and I hope that I can revist this subject many more time in the future. I'm hoping I can apply for a grant that will give me the financial freedom to explore its myriad complexities in much more detail, and culminate one day in a convicing collection of imagery and text. South Africa in many ways was where the colonial scramble for Africa began, and how it defined it's national boundaries all those years ago is a facinating subject in its own right. Cecil John Rhodes one of the architects of the now republic of South Africa, went beyond the Limpopo, all the way across Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and even onwards to Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia). South Africa was then and still is a regional powerhouse and some would say a bully.
A lot of how the map of Southern Africa looks today is a result of how colonial South Africa evolved and subjugated its own people and neighbours. Much of that fenceline is written in blood.
On assignment for French GEO Magazine. 2004.
"Joburg. No place quite like it....."
"Joburg. No place quite like it....."
THE CREST HOTEL
(Portrait series) taken from the Multi-Media Film by the same name. Chosen by NAN GOLDIN for the CPH:DOX Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival 2011)
Statement.
I remember the Crest Hotel way back in the 70’s. In fact it was from this hotel that I gathered my first impressions of our newly adopted land, South Africa. Emigrating here with my parents from England in January 1975, I was 12 years old when we arrived at the door of the Crest after a short cab ride from the austere Jan Smuts airport. Upon arrival at this comfortable 3 star hotel, a stone’s throw from the bustling boulevards of Hillbrow, I was awestruck by the views from our 12th floor window. Glittering skyscrapers and a zillion apartments surrounded us on all sides; our hotel it seemed was at the epicenter of all this glitz, with its lively terrace and sparkling pool.
For the two weeks that we lived in Hillbrow at the Crest while my father sought rented accommodation in the leafier northern suburbs, I gathered impressions of this ‘Americanized’ metropolis, admiring its scale & lofty buildings, sensing its economic presence and buzz, all the while searching out the exotica of black faces to remind myself that I was in Africa after all. Certainly during those first few weeks while strolling past the café & bakeries and soda pop joints of Pretoria & Kotze streets on balmy summer evenings, I could see clearly that this was the abode and playground for a predominantly white cast. I saw lots of happy white faces! An illusion of blissful living. An illusion of harmony and human equality. Yes this was a place of happy shiny white people, and I, the little white kid who’d just stepped off a plane in Africa from England, was entranced.
32 years later, I return to the Crest. Still entranced but for different reasons. The place has changed, the city has changed, and the country has changed. I’ve changed.
The Crest hotel therefore is my personal attempt to join dots, and answer pertinent questions to my own sense of failed idealism and dislocation. Projected through the presence of others, the Crest after all is where my journey to South Africa began.
For many presented here today though, this is where their journey will end, or has ended already. It’s where their relationship with South Africa is coming to an end too, but certainly did not begin. As an artist/photographer I intend to explore further themes or locations that I hope will allow me to investigate my relationship with this country and my country of birth, England. And how the two sit incongruously side by side within my own psyche.
The Crest is where I chose to begin this investigation.
Richard Mark Dobson
Johannesburg 2009
(Portrait series) taken from the Multi-Media Film by the same name. Chosen by NAN GOLDIN for the CPH:DOX Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival 2011)
Statement.
I remember the Crest Hotel way back in the 70’s. In fact it was from this hotel that I gathered my first impressions of our newly adopted land, South Africa. Emigrating here with my parents from England in January 1975, I was 12 years old when we arrived at the door of the Crest after a short cab ride from the austere Jan Smuts airport. Upon arrival at this comfortable 3 star hotel, a stone’s throw from the bustling boulevards of Hillbrow, I was awestruck by the views from our 12th floor window. Glittering skyscrapers and a zillion apartments surrounded us on all sides; our hotel it seemed was at the epicenter of all this glitz, with its lively terrace and sparkling pool.
For the two weeks that we lived in Hillbrow at the Crest while my father sought rented accommodation in the leafier northern suburbs, I gathered impressions of this ‘Americanized’ metropolis, admiring its scale & lofty buildings, sensing its economic presence and buzz, all the while searching out the exotica of black faces to remind myself that I was in Africa after all. Certainly during those first few weeks while strolling past the café & bakeries and soda pop joints of Pretoria & Kotze streets on balmy summer evenings, I could see clearly that this was the abode and playground for a predominantly white cast. I saw lots of happy white faces! An illusion of blissful living. An illusion of harmony and human equality. Yes this was a place of happy shiny white people, and I, the little white kid who’d just stepped off a plane in Africa from England, was entranced.
32 years later, I return to the Crest. Still entranced but for different reasons. The place has changed, the city has changed, and the country has changed. I’ve changed.
The Crest hotel therefore is my personal attempt to join dots, and answer pertinent questions to my own sense of failed idealism and dislocation. Projected through the presence of others, the Crest after all is where my journey to South Africa began.
For many presented here today though, this is where their journey will end, or has ended already. It’s where their relationship with South Africa is coming to an end too, but certainly did not begin. As an artist/photographer I intend to explore further themes or locations that I hope will allow me to investigate my relationship with this country and my country of birth, England. And how the two sit incongruously side by side within my own psyche.
The Crest is where I chose to begin this investigation.
Richard Mark Dobson
Johannesburg 2009
MARITIMUS ORIENTAL
"The beauty and genius of a work of art may be re-conceived, though its first material expression bedestroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again." William Beebe. (American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist-
The Subject. Photography still life series of marine specimens that were identified, jarred and labelled in the mid 20th Century, from the 1930's through to the late 1970's in Nha Trang, Vietnam. They constitute part of the collection of the Nha Trang Oceanographic museum, and are partly on display to the public (albeit from behind a cordon)
Why this series? These dusty and aging bottles & tanks containing marine specimens from oceans and seas of a different time and era fascinate me for a multitude of reasons; my already established interest in the natural world, natural history, marine biology, and my attraction to the aesthetics & fundamentals of form. Photographing these 'forms within forms' does result I think already in a highly decorative collection of imagery, but it is the aura of antiquity and glimpses into the past they offer that makes the series even more compelling. Added to this, a look at the optical aspects of glass and how over time, living matter, no matter how carefully embalmed or preserved changes and takes on almost another form altogether.
Methodology! I had to work immediately, there in situ, with no pretense of additional lighting. I felt an immediate need to photograph these glass repositories, which while having languished for decades on dusty shelves, and all having a distinctly neglected look, I felt for some bizarre reason, as with the delicate nature of glass, they could be gone if I waited another day. (The fragility/impermanence & durability of glass too that are themes represented in this series). Additional unknowns like officialdom or internal decisions to replace or even remove the collection added to my sense of urgency. The work is therefore a spontaneous look at these Darwinian sculptures, captured by the camera in an honest and direct way, unfettered by enhanced lighting techniques or retouching tricks.
The Subject. Photography still life series of marine specimens that were identified, jarred and labelled in the mid 20th Century, from the 1930's through to the late 1970's in Nha Trang, Vietnam. They constitute part of the collection of the Nha Trang Oceanographic museum, and are partly on display to the public (albeit from behind a cordon)
Why this series? These dusty and aging bottles & tanks containing marine specimens from oceans and seas of a different time and era fascinate me for a multitude of reasons; my already established interest in the natural world, natural history, marine biology, and my attraction to the aesthetics & fundamentals of form. Photographing these 'forms within forms' does result I think already in a highly decorative collection of imagery, but it is the aura of antiquity and glimpses into the past they offer that makes the series even more compelling. Added to this, a look at the optical aspects of glass and how over time, living matter, no matter how carefully embalmed or preserved changes and takes on almost another form altogether.
Methodology! I had to work immediately, there in situ, with no pretense of additional lighting. I felt an immediate need to photograph these glass repositories, which while having languished for decades on dusty shelves, and all having a distinctly neglected look, I felt for some bizarre reason, as with the delicate nature of glass, they could be gone if I waited another day. (The fragility/impermanence & durability of glass too that are themes represented in this series). Additional unknowns like officialdom or internal decisions to replace or even remove the collection added to my sense of urgency. The work is therefore a spontaneous look at these Darwinian sculptures, captured by the camera in an honest and direct way, unfettered by enhanced lighting techniques or retouching tricks.
SOI DOGS
2006 was a strange yet intoxicating year. A tangle of itinerant journeys.
I had purposely left South Africa (again) and was using Bangkok as my base, holed up in a guest house down the old Banglumpu. From there, with side trips to Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Lhasa, London, Phuket and Seoul, 2006 was a definitely a year of hop, skip and jump. I would arrive back each time from a different foray to the same guesthouse. Then go quench my thirst down at the nearby Gecko bar with gallons of chilled Tiger or Carlberg beer. And get shitfaced.
My mood that year was very up and down. Lots of melancholy interspersed with manic phases of joy. I think I was just too immersed in the horrors of the second gulf war. I spent way too much time soaking up the details on YouTube. Apache helicopter gunships mowing down innocent Iraqi's. POV views of US drone strikes. The lynching of Saddam Hussein.
It didn't help much that to while away my time in between the serialized 'Battle for Baghdad', I would walk Bangkok soi's in pursuit of well...errr... soi dogs.
This series is not for the faint at heart. Each time I go through these images, they bring on another bout of melancholy. So pitiful they are. The wretched lives of these poor hounds. Riddled with mange and distemper. Largely left to fend for themselves.
I would meet them eye to eye for a few brief moments. Their pitiful stare out from a lousy existence, would sear into my dulled self, muted down on compassion after years of seeing so much indifference to animal cruelty in Asia. I'd composed the shot, and then walk away feeling like shit. Time and time again thinking, what the fuck am I doing this for? Voyeurism without either a purpose or a mission statement. Shoots like this remind me why I didn't take up shooting misery for a living. In this case I was just shooting misery to make myself more miserable.
I purposely place this series in the Existential section of my website. For what else is this other than a case of 'hanging onto a not so dear life'. Exist. Existence. Exit.
VIETNAM CONTEMPORARY & THE MEKONG
This collection of recent images produced while on his 2013, 8800km Vietnam road trip, is chosen because they endorse by representation Dobson’s understanding of the fundamentals or DNA of the genre of urbanscape/landscape/street photography.
He believes the work encapsulates the Henri Cartier Bresson philosophy of the ‘decisive moment’ while endorsing other important principles and disciplines practiced by past and present master photographers. By combining an intriguing mix of light play, and using an interesting combination of place, time and moment, his intention is to create a compelling and slightly uneasy rhythm within the images that prompt us to look closer at them and possibly then discover subliminal messages that speak beyond the obvious of bricks and mortar, grass and rock, organic matter.
Dobson's interest in Vietnam goes back decades and he is continually drawn photographically to the visual incongruities and time warp characteristics that the country offers. He says "we are continually been pulled visually & audibly between antiquity and modernity. It's all intoxicating and all encompassing". Through this collection Dobson shares his love of Vietnam.
He believes they constitute valuable and important career milestone single or series images, and endorse his growing reputation as an emerging name in contemporary art photography world today.
He believes the work encapsulates the Henri Cartier Bresson philosophy of the ‘decisive moment’ while endorsing other important principles and disciplines practiced by past and present master photographers. By combining an intriguing mix of light play, and using an interesting combination of place, time and moment, his intention is to create a compelling and slightly uneasy rhythm within the images that prompt us to look closer at them and possibly then discover subliminal messages that speak beyond the obvious of bricks and mortar, grass and rock, organic matter.
Dobson's interest in Vietnam goes back decades and he is continually drawn photographically to the visual incongruities and time warp characteristics that the country offers. He says "we are continually been pulled visually & audibly between antiquity and modernity. It's all intoxicating and all encompassing". Through this collection Dobson shares his love of Vietnam.
He believes they constitute valuable and important career milestone single or series images, and endorse his growing reputation as an emerging name in contemporary art photography world today.
