Celebrating Female Photographers

As this is the month we celebrate women, I thought I should dedicate my blog to the female photographers that have inspired me through my studies and my career. I was introduced to most of them during my studies and some only recently. Some have guided me towards portrait photography while others have inspired me to document my life.

Mary Ellen Mark

I was introduced to the work of Mary Ellen Mark by my lecturer at the Ruth Prowse School of Art while studying photography. At that stage I was convinced that I was going to be a documentary photographer,  which is why her classic documentary approach really spoke to me. I appreciate and admire her remarkable ability to win the confidence of her subjects.

Mary Ellen Mark - The Damm Family in Their Car, Los Angeles, California, USA 1987

Mary Allen Mark was an American photographer known for her photojournalism, portraiture and advertising. She had 18 collections of her work published, including Streetwise and Ward 81.  Her work was widely published with exhibitions worldwide accumulating numerous awards along the way. Her photography addresses social issues such as homelessness, loneliness, drug addiction and prostitution, with children a reoccurring subject.

I feel an affinity for people who haven't had the best breaks in society. What I want to do more than anything is acknowledge their existence.

Mary was known for establishing the strong relationships she built with her subjects and to maintain those relationships. That is why there is such honesty in her portraits. There was a massive trust between the sitter and the photographer, something I aspire to.

Mary Ellen Mark - Tiny, Halloween, Seattle, 1983

Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz has been an inspiration since I was introduced to photography and my own personal idol. I will even say that I aspire to be the South African Annie!  

Annie Leibovitz - Yao Chen, the first Chinese UNHCR goodwill ambassador, 2016 Pirelli calendar

Anne Leibovitz - Susan Sontag

Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz was born in the States on 2nd of October 1949. She was doing night classes in photography while studying painting at San Francisco Art Institute. She continued to develop her skill while holding on to several jobs until she started working for Rolling Stone Magazine in 1970 as staff photographer. Three years later she became chief photographer and continued to work with the magazine for 10 years and shot 142 covers.

Leibovitz joined Vanity Fair in 1983 and became known for her wildly lit, staged and provocative portraits of celebrities - Whoopi Goldberg submerged in water;  a nude and pregnant Demi Moore are great examples. To me, one of her most powerful works is the recent 2016 Perelli Calendar where her interpretation created a beautiful, powerful collection of portraits displaying unique, independent woman of our time. For my full blog on her development and accomplishments have a read here.

Rineke Dijkstra

I was introduced to the work of Rineke Dijksta while I was working as a gallery assistant at the Photographers Gallery za.  I loved this one image, Kolobrzeg, Poland, 26 July, and was amazed at how a simple pose and an uncomplicated setting could have so much power. I felt a connection with the subject which is when I realized that as photographers we are able to capture the connection between ourselves and the sitter in a way that viewers are also able to experience.

Rineke Dijkstra - Kolobrzeg, Poland, 26 July

Dijkstra is a leading contemporary Dutch photographer born in 1959 and lives and works in Amsterdam.  Her career started by taking corporate portraits and images for annual reports. She was known for her single start portraits, usually concentrating on particular groups of people. In most of her series you can see a clear emphasis on capturing the awkwardness of adolescence. 

With young people everything is much more on the surface - all the emotions.  When you get older you know how to hide things.

'Beach Portraits' (1992-94) was life-sized colour photographs of young teenagers in bathing suits on beaches in the US, Poland, Britain, Ukraine and Croatia.  It resulted in international prominence after showing at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Dijkstra concentrates on single portraits and usually works in series. Series that followed were 'Buzzclub/Mysteryworld', 'Tiergarten Series', 'Isreali soldiers' and 'Park Portraits' to name a few.

Rineke Rijkstra - Amit, Golani Brigade, Elyakim, Israel, May 26, 1999

Rineke Rijkstra - Berlin, Tiergarten, Germany, 1999

Zanele Muholi

Zanele Muholi only caught my eye a year ago when I saw her work on exhibition at the Zeits Museum of Contemporary African Art. I was blown away by her powerful female portraits.  

Zanele Muholi - MaID I, Syracuse, NY (diptych), 2015

Zanele Muholi is a self proclaimed visual activist. She was born in Durban and now lives in Johannesburg. She co-founded the Forum for Empowerment of Women (FEW) in 2002 and in 2009 founded Inkanyiso, a forum for queer and visual (activist) media.  

Some of her work delves into very personal experiences, while other pieces comment on South Africa and its historical troubles. Her mission is "to re-write a black queer and trans visual history of South Africa for the world to know of our resistance and the existence at the height of hate crimes in SA and beyond."

Read my blog for more about this extraordinary South African photographer.

SOZO Foundation

This month my broker Matt Mill from Phoenix Risk Solutions recommended a foundation that they work with. I did a bit of research and got into contact with Lloyd, the managing director of Sozo where I was invited to visit the organization in Vrygrond. I thought living in Cape Town and exploring quite a bit that I'd know all areas, even the Cape Flats, but this time I had to swallow my pride and ask Google maps to take me to Vrygrond.  I'd obviously passed this area so many times, finding it nestled between Lavender Hill and Capricorn.

Lloyd met me and explained the need for this organisation.  He explained that there were no High Schools in Vrygrond so kids wanting to further their education had to cross two or more gang populated territories. The fear for their lives and even their transport money meant higher drop out rates at surrounding High Schools. Understanding that this would just contribute to a cycle of kids joining gangs and developing uneducated adults with no means to survive, the founders Anton and Elana created an education centre in Vrygrond.

The Sozo Foundation was founded by youth workers, Anton and Elana Cuyler who recognized an aggressive need for transformation within the Cape Flat community of Vrygrond, Cape Town which is notorious for abusive social behavior, violence and gangsterism.  

The foundation runs five core projects - Educentre, Eden, Design, Care and Youth Café – each specifically designed to promote education, skills, youth and wellbeing to promote better living conditions and basic human rights. Together with a core team of highly skilled professionals, the Sozo Tribe work hard to fill the lives of the impoverished community with dignity, hope and purpose.

When I arrived to capture the team portraits, there was a buzz of excitement.  Each group had themed outfits and a real effort was made to make the most of this portrait day. There were so many beautiful faces and exciting energies that I walked out feeling grateful that I could, if only for a couple of hours, be included and contribute to the amazing work of the Sozo Foundation. Looking forward to giving some Master Classes in Photography as well as form part of the Design Department skills development.

For more information about The Sozo Foundation, visit www.thesozofoundation.org.za

Tribute - David Goldblatt

Good photographers are story tellers and one of South Africa’s most influential photographers passed away last month.  David Goldblatt passed away at the age of 87 after a prestigious career as a documentary photographer capturing the events unfolding in South Africa during the apartheid era.  Every country has stories to tell but I think with South Africa’s conflicting past and rich diversity, it creates the backdrop to powerful imagery telling important stories.  Goldblatt captured these powerful moments in the apartheid years leaving us with a body of work that shares in all honesty a country working, failing, winning and changing.

Beginnings

Miner, Consolidated Main Reef, Roodepoort, 1967

Goldblatt began taking photographs in 1948 but started his career as a professional photographer on 15 September 1963 when he sold the family business, a men’s outfitters that he inherited from his parents.  He mentioned in an interview at the Design Indaba Conference in 2014, “The Ultimate Portrait” that he wanted to do this since high school but failed at first.  When his father passed away he had the freedom to pursue again.

Development

Goldblatt began exploring the Afrikaans farming communities in Western Transvaal, but his big break came when he started shooting assignments for the Tatler magazine and later for the Anglo American Corporation’s in-house magazine, Optima.  This gave him access to mining operations in South Africa which led to his first publication in 1972 – On the Mines.

Team leader and mine captain on a pedal car, Rustenburg Platinum Mine, Rustenburg, 1971

Accomplishments

A farmer in Krisjan Geel's store at Zwingili in the Marico Bushveld, Transvaal, 1964

In 1998, Golblatt was the first South African to be given a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  He was also one of the few South African artists to exhibit at Documeta 11 (2002) and Documenta 12 (2007) in Kassel, Germany.  He had solo exhibitions at the Jewish Museum and New Museum in New York.  His work was included in the exhibition ILLUMInation at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 and has featured on shows at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Barbican Centre in London.  He was also the recipient of some prestigious awards such as the 2006 Hasselblad Award, the 2009 Henri Cartier-Bresson Award and the 2013 ICP Infinity Award.

A farmer's son with his nursemaid, Heimweeberg, Nietverdiend, Western Transvaal, 1964

"Photography has the capacity for recognizing things and bringing them out of obscurity, or out of where they are into another frame so that one looks at it somewhat differently" - David Goldblatt

Municipal Officials Elize Klaaste, Senior Clerk, Loeriesfontein, Northern Cape., 2004

Black and White and Colour

While Goldblatt was documenting the developments in South Africa he only worked in black and white stating that: “During those years colour seemed too sweet a medium to express the anger, disgust and fear, that apartheid inspired.” It was only after the project he completed in Australia about a disease and death caused by blue asbestos, did he start exploring the medium to its full potential. 

A young woman at home in Fietas before its destruction under the Group Areas Act. 1976

Portrait Photography

Although in his later years Goldblatt focused his talents on landscape photography, his earlier work was mostly documentary and natural portraiture. These portraits usually spoke a truth of real people, real struggles, and raw beauty and shows a very sensitive approach.  He was always very impressed how people carried themselves. And you can see that there is an appreciation and understanding in his portraiture.  Although there was an aim to communicate his own sensuality and to reflect his interest in people, there was always a political undertone.

A legend with an understanding of light and an appreciation of people, a true inspiration for me personally and a great loss to our country.

Boorgat is die Antwoord, De Brak, on the Fraserburg-Sutherland road, 2007

Sunfieldhome - Centre for Intellectually Disabled Adults

Growing up in Wellington, Sunfield Homes has always had a special place in my heart.  One of my earliest documentary projects in college was about Sunfield homes, and now, 15 years later I walked back into this amazing community, recognizing some faces and feeling nostalgic.

Landi

I contacted Elmarie who referred me to Daisy and offered my services to photograph the staff that work there. Daisy suggested that the residents may also enjoy being photographed so with much delight, I arrived one Saturday morning to a buzzing courtyard of ladies in dresses and gents standing in line to get their beards trimmed.

Marguerite

Sunfield Homes in Wellington is a center for intellectually disabled adults.  Their residents are individuals who are unable to function without guidance or protection. The reasons for their diminishing intellectual ability differs from one individual to the next as a result of injuries sustained at birth, motor vehicle accidents, illness, environmental deficiencies, congenital or genetics such as Down Syndrome, Foetal Alcohol Syndrome or oxygen deprivation at birth.

Nicholas

The need for a safe haven for intellectually disabled adults was recognised and the doors of Sunfield homes was officially opened in January 1991, with seven residents. The facility has grown significantly providing a loving, nurturing environment for 96 residents as well as 10 day-care individuals, ranging from 18 years of age to 70 plus.

Ester

Residents are encouraged to develop as much independence as their individual capabilities allow and to participate in as much as possible in normal everyday activities.  Most residents attend a workshop during the day or participate in either paid or voluntary work.

Karel

As there are different levels of intellectual disabilities and capabilities among the residents, the accommodation types vary and range; some stay in their own flat while individuals requiring constant care will reside in Huis Liebenberg where dedicated staff will look after them 24/7.

Martie

Such beautiful people with so much love to give, I was honoured to be able to capture these amazing individuals. I walked away again realising how much I love what I do and appreciating moments like these.

Do get involved or for more information contact:

Elmarie van Schalkwyk - 021 873 5038 | 087 231 7260

Of visit their website: www.sunfieldhome.co.za

Beauty and the Brain

What do we perceive as beautiful? How much of our perception is nature and how much is nurture? Where does the primitive brain kick in and where does culture take over? As I find all my subjects beautiful because of interaction, I decided to explore what the brain does before being able to connect features to personality.

A Ted talk by Anjan Chatterjee triggered this urge to explore the concept of beauty.  He is a professor in neurology from the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and has done several studies on how the brain reacts to beauty.  Beauty has been a major discussion for decades but has mainly been discussed with logic or speculation. These days we have more information with tools of neurology and rules of evolutionary science.  Beauty is subjective being influenced by factors that are best for the survival of the group.  Through his studies, Anjan has pin pointed certain parameters of beauty:

Averaging - Composite or average faces are often found more attractive than each individual face.  This is where many different features of different individuals are put together to create one face.  It agrees with the idea mixed races are found more attractive than inbred families.  The reasoning behind this is that genetic diversity and adaptability indicates a stronger breed.

Symmetry - Most people find symmetrical features more attractive as we tend to choose perfection. Think of choosing a piece of fruit in the supermarket...you tend to go for the perfectly shaped apple because of survival and instinct.  Developmental abnormalities are associated by asymmetries and these imperfections in animals, plants and humans are usually connected with a parasitic infection. So symmetry is an indication of health.

Hormones - Estrogen and testosterone have an influence in what we find attractive.  Men are attracted to women whose features are both youthful and mature. If the face looks too young, she's not fertile and when the face is too old, reproductive success is in question.  Men will look for big eyes, full lips and narrow chins, all of which shows youth as well as high cheekbones which indicate maturity. Testosterone produces typical masculine features like thicker brows, thinner cheeks and square jaw.

So what happens in the brain when we see beautiful people? Areas that form part of our visual cortex recognize faces and activates an area that processes objects. Reward and pleasure areas in the frontal cortex deep within the brain get activated. So in essence the visual brain that recognizes faces combines with our pleasure centers to underpin the experience of beauty.  They have also found that our brain reacts to beautiful faces without thinking of beauty but identity meaning that the brain automatically responds to beauty by linking a visual with pleasure. 

The brain has identified beauty but automatically takes it a step further.  We also have a 'beauty is good' idea embedded in the frontal cortex, which overlaps neural responses with beauty and goodness, even when you’re not thinking of either.  The brain seems to naturally associate beauty with good which could explain the biological trigger to social effects of beauty.  Attractive people receive privileges, are regarded more intelligent, better jobs with higher pay. In his studies he has found that people with minor facial abnormalities are regarded as less intelligent, less hardworking, less good, less kind and less competent.  So it seems that the brain will have a negative association with disfigurement.

So why do I like redheads, a concept my friends can't seem to comprehend.  Why is beauty so objective?  Even though the brain has such a big influence on subconscious ideas and decisions, the primitive brain gets challenged continuously by popular beliefs, society and culture. What influence has society had on our idea of beauty and how has it changed over the past couple of years?  Look at gaps in the teeth that became so popular with models when previously everyone needed braces to close those unwanted gaps. Trends seem to move away from the average and we become attracted to what is different.  Is that conscious thinking, marketing and the need to be different? Is the brain still just interested in the big eyes and full lips?

An then culture and conditioning.  What we are used to will be attractive for us while previous experiences might create a negative connotation with feature that might be regarded as beautiful.  Be it conscious or subconscious, our perception of beauty is continuously evolving as we are changing and developing as a species. Next time your head turns or you do a 'double take', take some time to figure out what that trigger was.  Popular belief? What you're used to, or your brain trying to get your gene into the next generation.

Rainbow of Hope

Natalie - International Tooth Fairy Day - 28 February

Rainbow of Hope was recommended to me by Clint Thomas.  He gave me Alison Alexander's contact details explaining how she runs a non profit in Goodwood, creating a home for children in need of a safe space.  He didn't want to give me any more information and just smiled, saying "Just go have a look..."

I phoned Alison and found a time to go visit what I thought was just going to be another home for abandoned and abused children. Rainbow House was nothing like any I'd seen before.  There was an immediate feeling of belonging, safety and warmth.  It felt like the house I grew up in, and not a hostel as you would think.  The house was beautifully decorated with each room beautifully unique.  All the kids were looking happily busy with chores as Alison showed me around.

And what a remarkable woman, Alison Alexander.  I would say she is a mother hen with the heart of a lioness. She cares about the children in her home as if they were her own and she will fight for them if anyone tries to hurt them.  

Rainbow House can provide care for up to 14 children. The range of facilities available to the care givers are well utilized and include occupational therapy, medical care, psychological support from qualified practitioners as well as healthy exercise, musical stimulation and art therapy to ensure the downward spiral is curbed and reversed. Rainbow House also offers a wide range of workshops in conjunction with other NGO’s) for prospective parents looking to foster or adopt a child, equipping them with the skills and understanding required to care and the support once the child is ready to leave the haven.   

Zoe - Hip Hop History Month - November

Fabian - International Food Day - 16 October

With great enthusiasm I offered my services and Alison shared her vision.  We decided to create a calendar series of themed portraits for a 2019 calendar that would go to all the beneficiaries that have supported Rainbow House throughout the years. Each child chooses a month and day which they would like to portray.

Then the conceptualisation started with great excitement. Two weeks later, my assistant and I arrived to a house of children bustling with excitement at the thought of playing dress up, having their faces done up by Chelsea, our make-up artist for the day, and picture taken. All the characters and beautiful smiles came out in full swing including appearances by the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Santa’s Little Helper, Spaghetti Boy and one particular little beauty who braved the downpour of cold water over her head. What a champion! 

The end result was extremely satisfying serving up twelve new beautiful images documenting the precious lives of children that have all been given a second chance. To donate, become a volunteer or for more information about Rainbow House go to the Rainbow House website

Contact Alison Alexander to find out how to get involved:

rainbowhouse11@telkomsa.net

Tel/Fax: 021 591 6610

Cell: 082 202 0720

Shayner-Lee - New Years Day - ! January

Sisipho - Youth Day - 16 June

Bottomup

I find it very interesting how people are connected, people you work with and people you play with but in a sense your tribe gets validated continuously!  And this is not just Cape Town being a big town;)  This happened again when I asked a business coach I work with to suggest an NGO that he feels passionate about.  He put me into contact with Gerda from Bottomup, only to realise on arrival that we've met before through another good friend!  And it made the pleasure of meeting the team and offering my services just so much more rewarding.

Gerda von Benecke

Bottomup positions itself as a catalyst for organisational change in the under-resourced schools in the Grassy Park, Lotus River and Ottery area.  Their aim to apply an assets based approach, assisting schools to leverage their existing resources and capitals toward the goal of improving school culture. For Bottomup a just and fair society is one in which every child receives the best education possible, an education that encourages them to ask critical questions about power and society, one that liberates and frees the mind, and one that equips them with the tools needed to build a better world.  Projects run by Bottom include, amongst others, a project focusing on learner disengagement (school dropout) in high schools called Step Up, a Chess Program and a Philosophy Club in primary schools.

Lindsay Davids

Their vision is to work with existing schools and applying their approach to leverage existing resources in order to improve and enhance a child’s environment in order to provide a more positive and enlightened future.

Helene Visagie

The pressure to deliver education at grass roots level in South Africa has never been higher especially when you consider the lack of funds within the majority of under-resourced areas within our beloved country. Abiding by standardized curriculum and retaining leaders with valuable skill sets is only half the battle but to create a genuine culture, an environment where children can thrive and truly have a sense of pride and belonging is what really puts the Bottomup approach on top.

Robyn Smith

Chantal Monique Duson

Want to get involved?

Monetary donations welcome (visit website) or donate a book for our mobile library.  Visit www.loot.co.za and use their email address: info@bottomup.org.za in the wish list section to view books you can donate.  For more information or to sign up to their newsletter please visit their website: www.bottomup.org.za

Dean George

Marike Herselman Photography Speech

This is a speech I had to do at a Networking event about my business and as it communicates my vision well I thought I should add it to my blog.

The Cape Town Portrait Photographer...

My name is Marike Herselman, I'm a professional portrait photographer specialising in corporate portraits, head shots and personal portfolio's.

I will give you a brief overview of how I got here and my development as photographer.  Then I will explain why portrait photography in a global context and as a personal choice.  After that I will dig into die different parts of my business, touching on my values and views.

The Beginning and Development

My interest in photography started at school where I was the school photographer and was also allowed to create a darkroom in my parents house.  Luckily my father also enjoyed photography when he was younger, being very supportive, until I wanted to make a career out of it... Luckily I can be very convincing, so I studies 3 years of photography at Ruth Prowse School of Art in Woodstock, covering all fields from Fine Art to Food.  I started my career assisting various photographers in fashion, interior  and stock as well as working as in house photographer at a model agency and family studio.  I wanted to develop my own identity so started my own business at the end of 2014.  Since I've been refining & developing my business and finding my space as portrait photographer.

Portrait Photography through the ages

Why portrait photography?  Portraits have been around since the beginning of time as a means to describe not only the physical features, but more importantly power and status.  You can see this in the Ancient Egyptian wall paintings of gods and pharaohs as well as the Ancient Greek sculptures representing both gods and lay people.  Moving through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance portraits were mostly of Royals, nobles and religious and more often than not commissioned.  Still concentrating on a likeness until the 19th and 20th century where the models became nameless and work exploratory.  From the 60s photography took portraiture over because of it's immediacy and accuracy.  Actually this is one of the main reasons for the developing of photography and biggest commercial drive when photography became mainstream.

Influence of Digital Photography

With the rise of the digital age, photography became instant and accessible to the masses.  Taking the novelty away from having your portrait taken as anyone with a smartphone can take the role of a photographic Studio.  As I've explained before: being able to capture the likeness of a person does not make you a great portrait photographer.  Even if you take away all the big lenses and all the fancy lights and strip the moment to it's bare essentials, you have a sitter and a photographer and your aim is to capture the connection between the two and carry it to the viewer.

What is a good portrait?

What make a good portrait can differ from person to person, some people need a a vulnerability to be able to connect, some need a mystery to engage and some will need a power to be challenged.  To me these are all true, but most importantly, a good portrait make the viewer want to engage, to get to know or to understand.  What is a portrait but a visual representation of who you are and what you stand for.  When someone looks at a picture of you, there is no background dialog to explain your morals, views and fears.  Even a great photographer can't communicate all of this, but a portrait is suppose to spark an interest of wanting more, 'I want to know this person' or 'I want to work with this person'.

Portraiture and Business

Then why is a professional portrait so important in business?  First impressions last, most of the time you don't meet your potential or even your current client.  The only visual they have of you is the portrait on your "About page".   Which is currently a picture taken at a wedding.  With your ex-boyfriend carefully cropped out... as this is the only professional picture you have of yourself.  Is this the right professional presentation of you, does this picture communicate professionalism?  In most cases not...  Your 'About Page' is one of the most frequently visited pages on your website which gives you the opportunity to introduce yourself in the best light without even being there.  Let your 'About Page work for you!  Your paying for it, everyday!

 

Profiles - the personal approach

I know that the reason why many people do not make the effort to get professional portraits done are mostly time and fear.  It is traumatic to have a  massive lens staring at you and you're waiting for the lights to flash and expose every wrinkle and all your secrets.  This is why I try to make the camera and lights fade away in the background and let the conversation and the connection take center stage.  With professional profiles this is the most important thing as you're trying to capture the essence of that person, being a psychologist, professional athlete or actor.  Everyone brings their own insecurities to a shoot and my job is to create a safe space and build a trust.  Usually we'll work in a space where the sitter is comfortable, first starting with a conversation to build familiarity and trust and the slowly start introducing the camera.  It's always very interesting to see how the comfort level changes from the start of the shoot to the end, a couple of hours later.

Corporate portraits - Developing quick connections

Corporate portraits works a little differently as you usually do not have an hour or two with each subject.  Here my aim is to be as efficient as possible, putting my sitter at ease as soon as they walk through the door and immediately guiding them into a pose that translate well with the honesty that is required.  I usually go to the company's offices for ease of travel for their employees and to make sure no one looses to much of their workday.  I'll work closely with HR and we'll get the team into groups in different time slots that makes the whole shoot as efficient as possible.

Retouching, yes or no?

Then before I close I would like to touch on retouching as people usually ask.  It has become such a norm in our day and age and although so many celebrities started to encourage the opposite, it will remain in our society for years to come.  I truly believe that everyone is beautiful and that honest beauty is what I aim to capture.  Saying this, most of my clients request basic retouching so I will remove anything that is not permanent, like pimples and soften everything that is, like wrinkles.

To photograph people is the most rewarding thing.  In a way you're trying to capture the essence of a person through light and put it onto a two dimensional medium.  In my work I want to build a trust to allow my subject to show me their true self so I can show them how beautiful, interesting and enchanting they can be. 

Development of Colour Photography

Hand-colouring

After establishing a stable portable and affordable photographic process, people wanted to capture the amazing colours of our world.  They started with tinting daguerreotypes and calotypes by hand.  Hand colouring became big in Japan and became a defining characteristic of Japanese tourist photography.

Lippmann’s flowers photograph created in the 1890s

Colour through interference

The first experiments started in the mid 19th century and was achieved by physicist and inventor, Gabriel Lippmann.  In 1886 he created the first colour photograph without the aid of pigments or dyes.  Lippmann used a phenomenon known as interference to achieve this.  This is where two waves superpose to forma result wave of greater, lower or same amplitude.  He was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery.

Lippmann’s process of using the interference phenomenon was complex and had it’s drawbacks though. Long exposure times, fine-grained high resolution emulsions were needed, it didn’t do well with reflections and required a process using toxic mercury.

Maxwell’s Ribbon Photograph

Start of RGB

During this time a Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell was working on a new colour theory, which he presented to the Royal Institute in 1861.  He’s idea was to photograph a scene through red, green and blue filters.  If these overlap with the matching filters, a complete colour image is created.

This method was pushed to the background until a German Scientist, Hermann Wilhelm Vogel used the three-colour theory to create emulsions that were only sensitive to particular colours by adding dyes.   This process took time to be refined and only until the early 20th century accurate and sensitive enough to use in traditional photography.

Layers of colour

As taking the same photograph three times using three different lenses was complicated, two camera types were developed.  One used a lens that could separate incoming light though 3 filters and taking 3 photographs at the same time.  The second one had to take separate images but had a drop back to make the swap of filters and emulsion types quick and ‘easy’.

Untitled, Louis Arthur Ducos du Hauron

Louis Decos de Hauron started to lay three different colour emulsion on top of each other that can be exposed at the same time.  This was an important step to send the colour photography to where it is now, only problem was that each layer tended to soften the light as it passed through the emulsion.

This was not a perfect process but send photographers happily on their way, capturing colour.  In the 1930’s Agfa-Ansco produced a roll type film for snapshot cameras.  These rolls were sent back to the supplier for development, but were still not sharp enough.

The Kodak, Agfa race

In 1935 Kodak released a ‘tripack’ film, Kodachrome, developed by Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky.  This due of musicians were hired by Kodak Research Laboratories and created a colour positive (or slide) film produced with a subtractive colour photography method. Although the processing of this film were complicated and had to be sent back to Kodak, the rich warm tomes and sharpness  made it the preferred film for over 70 years.  In 1936, Agfa was able to refine Kodak’s development process by developing all three layers at one time as well as developing the Agfacolour negative-positive process.  This was only released in 1949 because of World War II that gave Kodak a chance to release their negative-positive film, Kodacolor, in 1942.

And there was colour...

In the beginning 1960’s colour film started to make their mark in the market but was still much more expensive that black & white file.  By the 70s the prices started dropping to be accessible to the masses and by the 80’s stated taking over to be dominant medium used for daily snapshots of life.  It started gaining acceptance and could be found from amateur holiday shots to photographs on the moon.

Untitled, William Eggleston

Artists, like William Eggleston and Ernst Haas started using colour photography as an creative expressive medium.  Newspapers started to embrace colour images when the Illustrated London News printed colour pictures in their Christmas Day edition on 1855.  This was a once off though and only really caught on in the 1950’s and after.   While magazines started using colour photography in the 1890’, the printing was still unreliable and only became a standard in the 1920’s

With colour photography was taken to another level.  Allowing true expression for the masses and a visual sensation for the eyes.  Now understanding the complications on being able to capture  colour we can step into the digital age…

The Haven Night Shelters

I've been asked many times how I decide on the charities I choose to offer my services.  Some arrive at my doorstep, some I've heard about and sometime I ask friends and people that I meet which charity is close to their hearts.  This one is for a good friend Pieter Basson, who's asked me a couple of times to work with the Haven Shelter in Cape Town.

Hassan Khan Chief Executive Officer

I met with the managing director Hassan Khan and his assistant Waheeda.  Hassan took the time to explain their concept, aim and mission which is truly exciting!  We decided to initiate a campaign that Hassan been wanting to do for a couple of years already. 'Spot the homeless'.  The idea is to create a campaign of awareness.  Where people can identify, relate and realize how close to home this could be.  Anyone can be homeless, it takes one bad decision, one wrong move.  So I started to project of capturing the entire Haven community, from the Board members, the staff, residents as well as visiting the old age home.

The Haven believes that no one should be living on our streets. There comes a stage in the downward path of certain human beings at which point, they literally can no longer help themselves. At that point someone has to step in and give them a lift; that is what THE HAVEN tries to do.

- The Haven Night Shelters

Donovan Murphy - Client

The aim is to create opportunities for adults living on the streets that are committed to reintegration, by supplying temporary shelter, physical care, rehabilitation opportunities and social welfare services.  Alongside this they try to reduce the opportunities to continue life on the streets by also promoting community awareness and encourage the public to alleviate the social problems that arise.

Sheila Jacobs - Manager

Fieldworkers hit the streets to encourage people to get of the streets and go back home.  Sometimes the process of getting them back to their loved ones are not that easy and this is where a shelter like the Haven steps in, by actively trying to find the person’s family by any means possible and when the integration is not wanted by either party, closely working with a social worker to start the process.

Angelique Coakley - Client

Benedict Alexander - Board Member

Now the Haven is also very aware that giving beds and food to all the homeless in the Western Cape is an impossible task.  Also the plan is to empower these people the they can get off the streets, out of a shelter and back on their own feet again.  When a homeless person arrives at the shelter, he/she is a guest.  They are welcome to stay and eat and make up their minds about the shelter in 5 days.  After that, decisions have to be made.  If they wish to stay at the Haven they have to start working for their bed and start with a social program. 

Antoinette Meiring - Social Worker Supervisor

The Haven are not giving people fish but teaching them to fish.  Getting homeless people to take responsibility for their own lives and taking the power back into their own hands.

Buy a Bed!  The Haven Nights Shelters started a campaign where people can buy beds for homeless people who wishes to be guests at the shelter.

Or contact Hassan or Waheeda for more information on how to get involved:

+27 (21) 425 4700

info@haven.org.za

https://www.haven.org.za

The History of Photography - Black & White Development

As it is the beginning of the year and I have not yet covered this subject in one of my blogs, I have decided to give you a brief History of Photography.  As we have come so far in the last 2 centuries, I will have to break this into 3 parts.  Concentrating on the development of basic photography, analogue black and white firstly.  Then I'll give you a idea of how colour photography developed and lastly I'll jump into the development of the Digital Age...

Understanding Photography

To find the beginning of photography we have to look at what photography is.  It is capturing light onto a durable 2 dimensional form, this can be on a copper plate or on a digital screen.  Now to understand photography we have to understand light.  Light is reflected off surfaces and objects and captured by the rods and cones on the retina at the back of our eyes. In photography we capture the same light and make a permanent representation of this reflected light.

The Philosophy

So if you look at photography as a science and an understanding of light you realize that it already started in the 5th-4th Century BC with the Greek and Chinese Philosophers when they started to describe the basic principles of light and optics.  Founder of Mohism, Mo Zi contributed in basic concepts of linear optics, the straight line propagation of light and refraction of light, explaining the inverted image nature of an image in camera obscura.  While Aristotle explained how a ray passing through a hole would project an image of whatever comes in it’s path on the opposite wall.

Mo Zi

The Science

Then a basic understanding of the nature of light and optics developed with Leonardo Da Vinci discovering the use of lenses to create sharper images and Hans Lippershey that created the first telescope in 1608.  The telescope might seem far removed but that is exactly what a camera is.  It uses convex and concave lenses to bend and manipulate light to enhance clarity  and visibility.  Our modern understanding of light and colour started when Newton refracted a ray of light into a spectrum of light.  Proving that white light is composed of different colours of light.

Capturing light temporarily

In 1727, Johan Heinrich Schulze discovered that the darkening of various substances when mixed with silver nitrate is due to light and not heat as previously believed.  He also used this phenomenon to temporarily capture shadows.  He found a way to capture light but if wasn’t permanent.  After him Thomas Wedgewood and Humphry Davy were able to beduse more substantial but still temporary shadow images on coated paper and leather around 1800.

View from the Window at Le Gras - Nicephore Niepce

Making it permanent

In 1816 Nicephore Niepce was able to photograph camera images on paper coated with silver chloride, but was also unable to make it light fast and the image had to be exposed for 8 hours. It was only in 1835 that Willian Fenry Fox Talbot created the first successful camera photographs using paper sensitized with silver chloride. As he created a negative to reproduce, the exposure time was n hour or more to create a suitable negative.

Photography becomes public

After Sir John Herschel coined the term photography in 1839, the French Artist Louis Daguerre invented the ‘Daguerreotype’ process of photography.   The Daguerreotype is the process of using a sheet of silver plated copper, exposed through a camera to light, resulting a latent image.  This latent image will be made visible by fuming it with mercury vapor and removing it’s light sensitivity by a liquid chemical treatment.  It was the first photographic process that was available publicly, needed less than 30 minutes exposure and most commonly used for nearly 20 years.

In 1841 Talbot introduced the calotype or talbotype to the public, which used paper instead of metal sheets, but it did not displace the daguerreotype. Although the Calotype was the first negative-positive process, giving you the possibility to reproduce the image, it created a less clear image than the daguerreotype.  The use of paper as a negative was not ideal as the texture and fibres were visible on the prints made.

Salt print from a glass collodion negative - The J. Paul Getty Museum

Speeding it up

Ten year later the invention of the Collodion process offered clearer images with 2-3 second exposures.  This technique was invented by Englishman Frederick Scott Archer.  A glass plate was coated with silver iodide and exposed in a camera while still wet.  After which it was developed and fixed to create a clear detailed negative.  These negatives still needed to be developed immediately as it became waterproof when dry.

George Eastman, founder of Kodak

And then there was Kodak...

Richard Leach Maddox invented the gelatin dry plate silver bromide process in 1871, which allowed negatives not to be developed immediately.  Before long the emulsion could be coated on celluloid roll film.  This is where George Eastman invented flexible, paper-based photographic film in 1884, popularizing the use of film and making photography more mainstream.  He was the founder of the Eastman Kodak Company.  In 1888 he perfected the Kodak Black camera, the first camera to house a roll of film.

After establishing a stable portable and affordable photographic process, people now wanted colour...  

Herselman Family through the 'ages'

This is going to be the first time I'm writing a very personal blog that is not directed to my philosophies on photography or research or inspirations, but about why I think it is important to take family portraits regularly. 

As a family we used to get together every couple of months for a family picture.  Usually after church as that was the only time my sister and I would look semi decent according to my mom.  My dad would set up his Pentax Spotmatic F in the sitting room and we would all squeeze onto the little couch.  I still remember the sound of the timer and the loud shutter.  We used to dread those Sundays but it was quick and painless, two shots and we hope for the best!  

Now we treasure those images as it tells us about a stage in our lives that we might've wanted to forget.  When everyone thought you were a boy because of your hair.  Or when you had braces and did't know how to smile.  You see your dads hair getting less and your mom's glasses getting smaller.  You see the change in style and the change in attitude.  But you see the thread quite prominently, the bond, the love that you share for each other that would not be destroyed with a disagreement, distance or any bad hair day!

The year is drawing to an end and this is the time that we start turning our attention to our families again.  Although we know our attention should be on the family through the whole year, we struggle to stick to this.  Life gets busy, work is demanding and we can't keep all the balls in the air at once.

What happens if we drop a ball?  What happens if you've lost your job or had a massive fight with a good friend or broke up with the girlfriend?  Who is there to pick up the pieces and have been there for as long as you can remember?  It's your family, may it be your wife or your child, your sister or your father, even your dog.  Doesn't matter if they give you some good advice or just give you a loving hug.

Through the year we tend to forget about this very important support structure, the safe space that we take for granted.  We live in a unpredictable world.  We have no idea what will happen tomorrow, who will be taken from us and who might be left behind.  My father passed away very suddenly less than 4 years ago, and now that last picture of the four of us is the most valuable shot my Canon at that time has ever taken.   

We can't afford to let these moments pass us without acknowledging the importance.  Take the time this festive season to reconnect and to appreciate what you have.  You'll miss it when it's gone, believe me...

Chaeli Campaign

Last month I had the privilege to meet Chaeli Mycroft from the Chaeli Campaign.  She is such an inspiration and had such a beautiful energy, that you walk away from a conversation with her feeling optimistic and energised, ready to take on any challenge!  I got introduced to Zelda, Chaeli's mother and she was too happy to make use of my services.  We decided to photograph the children in the preschool as gift for their parents as well as portraits of the staff that works the magic day to day.

Majdi from Chaeli Cottage Preschool

The amazing thing is that the Chaeli campaign was started by five young girls, aged between 6 and 12.  Chaeli and her sister, Erin along with their friends, Tarryn, Justine and Chelsea, all sisters, started the campaign to raise R20 000 for Chaeli's motorised wheelchair.  This they did by selling cards and Sunshine Pots, which are DIY miniature pot plants.  The cards displayed artworks of Erin and Chaeli and is still available.

Because there was such a great interest and support the campaign just get growing organically.  The aim is to is to change the life of one disabled child at a time in a significant way.  This through the following initiatives:

• Therapies Programme - Regular physiotherapy, speech and occupational therapy sessions in several communities around Cape Town.
• Assistive Devices Programmes - Custom-made assistive devices to improve posture and functional use of hands and fingers.
• Inclusive Education - ECD (Early Childhood Development) inclusive programme for disadvantaged communities as well as support children with disabilities in mainstream schools.

Zelda Mycroft, CEO and mother of Chaeli

"Our Vision is to mobilise the minds and bodies of children with disabilities and to normalise society through advocacy and education programmes and events."

Leigh from Chaeli Cottage Preschool

I met the amazing children of the Chaeli Cottage Preschool and Enrichment Centre with Debbie Prudromme.  It smelled of cooked and was filled with laughter.  It is an inclusive Early Childhood Development (ECD) Centre in Plumstead.  They currently have 16 children - a beautiful group of children with disabilities learning and playing side by side with able bodied children.

Tlholo from Chaeli Cottage Preschool

To get involved with the Preschool, visit the Chaeli Campaign website, you can become a pledge partner or even offer to sponsor a child at school.  Contact Debbie for more information.

Zanele Muholi - Somnyama Ngonyama

The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa opened at the Grain Silo Complex at the V&A Waterfront.  Zeitz MOCAA is a public not-for-profit art museum which collects, preserves, researches and exhibits 21st century art from African and its Diaspora.  The aim is to guarantee access for all allowing South Africa's free access on Wednesdays from 10h00 to 13h00 and free access on Museum nights from 17h00 to 22h00.  The museum stretches over 9 floors and houses over 100 galleries.

Even if you're not an art lover, just to see how these silos were transformed is an experience in its own.  But this is not a blog about the Zeitz MOCAA and it architectural brilliance or the vast collection of exquisite (and questionable) art but about some inspiration that stirred my artist heart:

Zanele Muholi - Bona, Charlottesville, 2015

Somnyama Ngonyama/Hail the Dark Lioness is a exhibition by Zanele Muholi of black and white photographs on silver gelatine.  In this body of work Muholi turns the camera on herself to as she depicts various personas in different part of the world.  She engages in issues of race, politics and gender, drawing from personal experiences to create a very personal body of work.

Muholi started this body of work in 2014 with the aim to create 365 shots.  In a interview with the Gaussian the stated: 'You live as a black person for 365 days, there are a lot of events and experiences that up go through in a year.  I wanted to map those important or specific moments'

Some of her work delves into very personal experiences like Julile I, where the inflated plastic bags represent the large fibroids she had removed from her uterus.   While other pieces comment out South Africa and it's history and troubles.

Zanlele Muholi - Julile I, Parktown Johannesburg, 2016

Zanele Muholi is a self proclaimed visual activist.  She was born in Durban and now lives in Johannesburg.  She co-founded the Forum for Empowerment of Women (FEW) in 2002 and in 2009 founded Inkanyiso, a forum for queer and visual (activist) media.  

Her mission - "To re-write a black queer and trans visual history of South Africa for the world to know of our resistance and the existence at the height of hate crimes in SA and beyond.

Muholi studies Advanced Photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg, and in 2009 completed an MFA: Documentary Media at Ryerson University, Toronto.  She is an Honorary Professor at the University of the Arts Bremen and continues to train and co-facilitate photography workshops for young women in the townships.

As I walked through Muholi's exhibition I was firstly blown away by the beautiful printing and the beautiful way she captured light.  But I also felt like I was allowed into a world that I have not experienced.  And while there is a continuous theme of enduring pain, there is also a a strength and defiance in her eyes.

Zanele Muholi - Somnyama Ngonyama II, Oslo, 2015

Xola Educare

I met Vivian Mthwesi while working on a project for CTO.  Vivian runs a preschool in Khayelitsha.  She asked me to help with taking picture of the kids for graduation.  She was such an inspiration in her approach to educate and to guide.

Vivian started by opening her home to 7-9 children in 2008 and now she's accommodating40-70 children between the ages of 1-6 years.  With the help of her family, Vivian dreams to develop the school through sustainability.

As preschools do not reach the governmental standard of requirements, Non Profit Organisations have to step in to cover this very important phase in a childs life.

In Khayelitsha alone, there are more than 400 preschools for Grade R, and only 50 of them get financial support from the government.  Now if you also consider children younger than 6 and put that into the calculation, you realise what a great need there is.

Vivian concentrates on teaching all the kids to be able to communicate in English so the have a head start when going to school.  Also she accepts all races and cultures under her roof, making the kids used to living in a rainbow nation in peace and acceptance.

To get involved:

Vivian Mthwesi - 071 814 0120

CTO - sofia@cto.world

Smartphone Portrait : Smart move?

In the past month I have come across too many people admitting their profile portraits on their website were shot with a smartphone. Also there was no shame or guilty look in their eyes! 

Can you take a good portrait using a smartphone?

Personally I don't think this is possible, and as this is my subjective view, I will have to explain myself using what I believe to be a good portrait as a framework. A good portrait should make the subject look good and make the viewer want to engage.

How do you make someone look good? They already look great you just have to harvest that light correctly to represent them in the best way possible, and this is where the technical bits come in.

Technicalities - The Lens

The focal length of the camera in your smartphone ranges from 25mm to 31mm, this depends on the length of the lens and the size of the sensor. This is a prime lens so when you zoom in it actually just magnifies and crops this image and won't change the focal length, loosing quality in the process. This focal length is equivalent to a wide-angle lens when you compare it to a DSLR camera. These lenses are used to allow more of the environment to be captured within one image. Think of standing in a small room and being able to get more of your peripheral view into the picture. It bends the light to be able to do this and in turn will distort objects, making an object closer to the lens appear larger than usual. Now take this into consideration when taking a close up portrait of someone, that normal nose will become larger than life… Using a 70mm-100mm is considered ideal for portraiture, as this will get rid of lens distortion, creating a more flattering image and allow a bit of space between you and your subject, which would be less intimidating.

Depth-of-Field and Selective Focus

Canon 5d mkii, 50mm @f1.4

A longer lens in collaboration with the right aperture will also allow selective focus. Depth of field refers to the depth of an image that will be in focus. Wide lenses have a greater depth of field, allowing everything to be in focus while a longer lens will have a selective focus. So, when taking a portrait of someone where the subject is in focus and the background is blurry, the attention will stay on the subject. Or when doing close up's you can concentrate on the eyes for an engaging, intimate effect.

Proof in comparison

In the comparison you can easily see the distortion and the difference in depth, but now you can argue "He's not smiling!". With the iPhone I had to get very close to get the right crop while I was at a comfortable distance with the DSLR. 'Invading' the sitter space will effect the way the subject will react to the photographer. Niall was much more confortable when I took a step back. There is also a shift in confidence that I've noticed on many occasions when you pull out the 'big guns'.

iPhone5, default lense, automatic

Canon 5d mark ii, 70mm f4 @ 1/400

iPhone 4

What about the iPhone7 Portrait Mode?

Now the iPhone 7 with its portrait function is trying to replicate this effect. It uses a dual-camera system to create a faux depth of field effect with a Gaussian blur to simulate this effect. It houses a 28mm as well as a 56mm equivalent lens. This gets close to simulating the depth you can achieve with a wide lens so could work well with environmental portraits but not headshots and will not come close to what you can achieve with a proper portrait lens.

Capturing the light

Lastly from a technical point of view, I just want to touch on light. Smartphones have proven themselves very capable of capturing natural light, so when studio is not involved, the smartphone can be seen as an equal. Here the photographer has to take responsibility of understanding light and how it effects it's subject. Top lit will create shadows under the eyes, incandescent lighting will give a yellow hue while under lit situations will create dark eyes and unflattering skin.

The Connection

Getting to the second part of the framework, we can strip the photographer from all it's fancy camera's lights and equipment because in the end we're sitting with two people, a sitter and a photographer, an interaction and in the end a collaboration. Phillip Prodger, Head of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery said it so well:

"In the best portraits a spark flies from sitter to maker to viewer, a synapse firing between us. We can try to describe it, but its real effects are subcutaneous."

By Phillip Prodger

What is a good Portrait?

A portrait are not a mere likeness to the sitter, if that was the case everyone with a good lens or smartphone could be a great portraitist. As Phillip mentioned there is a connection between the sitter and the photographer that gets captured and carried to the viewer. What a good portrait is, will differ from person to person, some people wants vulnerability to be able to connect, some needs mystery to engage, some will need power to be challenged. To me these are all true, the most important thing is that the viewer want to engage with the sitter, to get to know or to understand.

What is a portrait but a visual representation of who you are and what you stand for. When someone is looking at a picture of you, there is no background dialog that explains your view, morals, passions or fears. Even a great portrait will not be able to communicate all of this, but a portrait should be able to spark an interest of wanting more: "I want to get to know this person" or " I want to work with this person" You can probably take an okay picture with your cell phone but then are we really striving for mediocrity?

Contribution To Opportunities

I was introduced to Mapanya Sogoni through Frida Vesterberg from Project Playground. I did a bit of research and listned to his TED talk and was immediately inspired by this dynamic man. He is Operations Manager of CTO. I met with him and Co-Founder Sofia Johansson to offer my services and very excitedly she asked me if I will create a little clip to explain the mission and Vision of CTO.

"Through wisdom we shall grow"

By Vivian - CTO

CTO is a capacity building organisation for social entrepreneurs and their initiatives for children and youth. Their Vision is to see initiatives, for children and youth, grow into sustainable organisations with good governance and financial transparency.

Their mission is to recognise and invest in trustworthy, pre-existing initiatives in disadvantaged communities, thus establishing true change for the people involved through Sustainability, Maintainability and Independency.

"It all started in March 2014 when Sofia and Jasmina - Swedish students of the University of Karlstad working on their master thesis in working life science and visiting Cape Town for a few weeks - by chance ended up in Khayelitsha, a township with approximately two million people in the outskirts of Cape Town. Luckily they met Vivian who invited them to her home and told them about Xola Educare she had set up there and the challenges she was facing. Inspired by Vivian's dedication and seeing an opportunity to contribute to an existing local initiative, CTO was born."

CTO recognize individuals who show an entrepreneurial side, a clear vision of an initiative, got a drive, passion, pride, heart. These are the characteristics of a change agent for which we provide the platform, support and tools to become sustainable and independent.

To get involved, please contact:
Contribution To Opportunities
+27 (0)61 409 4811
Info@cto.world
Siseko Community Centre
No 91 Ny 43
Guguletu
Cape Town
7750
or Visit their website

SAYes transition mentoring

It's lovely when the universe conspires, so this month the NGO came to me. A good friend asked if I would be interested in offering my services to the NGO she is involved with. After a quick chat and a look at their website, I decided this is an organisation that I would love to work with.

SAYes is a non-profit organization that train and support volunteer to mentor vulnerable young people. Gillian Anderson and Michelle Potter founded the organization for you people living in children's homes in South Africa in 2008.

"South Africa can't afford not to inspire new leaders of social change. We train and support mentors to improve the impact of programmes for vulnerable young people - tractably, sustainably and at scale."

- By SAYes Mentoring

Their purpose is to inspire and inform leaders of social change through mentoring. They're aim is to improve social impact, reducing social inequality and creating and supporting youth programmes to do good, better.

"We think of social change as something you want to do with your time. So we offer a professional and personalised service to help you do it well."  

 - SAYes Mentoring

SAYes also facilitate and support social initiatives like first time career opportunities for young people with mentor guidance to make a visible impact. Also including many youth programmes and services run by non-profits and government. These programmes are well researched and aim to improve independence and well-being, creating youth that are able to make informed choices and follow healthy practices.

The team of support specialists is trained counselors, educators, coaches and social workers that coordinates information, resources and opportunities among the partners, volunteers and programmes. Their purpose is to "ignite opportunities for social change by providing a professional and personalised service to each mentor-mentee match".

TRANSITION MENTORING PLATFORM

All SAYes and SAYes affiliated programmes are run on the Transition to Independent Living (TIL) platform managed by SAYes. TIL relies on mentorship along with cross-sector collaboration, digital infrastructure, and nested support to optimise meaningful transitions. TIL includes:

• Recruitment and screening of volunteer mentors including local and international police clearance and background checks.
• Volunteer fit evaluation based on a comprehensive online application and interview.
• Transition mentorship training (for both mentors and mentees) focused on mentoring and strategic planning for personal transition.
• Youth population training focused on working with different groups of young people in context.
• Placement on a SAYes or SAYes affiliated programme designed to support a specific youth population by providing evidence-based curricula and/or services.
• Facilitated mentor-mentee matching using credible psychometric tools.
• Transition mentoring face-to-face with a young person for 1 hour per week for 9 months.
• Online transition tools, software and resources to support transition planning.
• Business partners providing mentored youth with career opportunities and resources (products or services).
• Non-profit partners providing mentored youth with access to additional programmes and services.
• Drop-in sessions in a particular field or area.
• Programme support specialists providing monitoring, transition and social work services to each mentor-mentee match.

There are many groups of vulnerable young people that could benefit from transition mentoring. SAYes affiliated programmes work with these groups using our transition platform. SAYes manages all TIL platform services for affiliated programmes, including the training and support of volunteer mentors, while the programme curricula and/or services are provided by the non-profit partner.

To get involved, please contact:
SAYes Mentoring
+27 (0)21 830 0795
volunteer@sa-yes.com
c/o Brickfield Call Centre
35 Brickfield Road
Woodstock
Cape Town
7925
or Visit their website

Respect: Annie Leibovitz

I've been drawn to the portraits of Annie Leibovitz since I was introduced to her work in college. At that stage I did not quite know what was the fascination and why I found her portraits so powerful. As I started to develop my own style and noticed what is important to me in a portrait, I realized it was the honesty that seems to emanate from her subjects.

"A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people."

By Annie Leibovitz

Early life and Rolling Stone

Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz was born in the States on 2nd of October 1949. She was doing night classes in photography while studying painting at San Francisco Art Institute. She continued to develop her skill while holding on to several jobs until she started working for Rolling Stone Magazine in 1970 as staff photographer. Three year later the became chief photographer and continued to work with the magazine for 10 year and shot 142 covers.

Capturing a relationship

One of the first pictures I remember was the one of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The picture was taken on December 8, 1980 and was the last professional photograph taken before John was assassinated hours later. Leibovitz explains that when John stripped down and Yoko didn't want to take her pants off she suggested to keep everything on. John automatically curled up next to her and this powerful image was created.

 

 

"When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I'd like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph."

By Annie Leibovitz

Vanity Fair and Vogue

Leibovitz joined Vanity Fair in 1983 and became known for her wildly lit, staged and provocative portraits of celebrities. Woopy Goldberg submerged in water and nude and pregnant Demi Moore being great examples. She created a comprehensive body of work, including actors, athletes, writers, musicians and politicians to make up a collective portrait of contemporary culture and intellectual life. Later she started to contribute for Vogue as well and in 1991 she mounted an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, making her the second living person and first woman to be exhibited by the institution. In addition to her magazine editorial work, Leibovitz has created several award-winning advertising campaigns, including the Got Milk camoaign and the Walt Disney, Year of a Million Dreams She's published many book and exhibitions of her photographs have appeared in museums and galleries all over the world. And to me one of her most powerful recent work is the 2016 Perelli 2016 where her interpretation created a beautiful, powerful collection of portraits of unique, independent woman of our time.

In a way Leibovitz can be seen as the photographer to the stars and her work can be very dramatic and highly styled but there is still a mix of intimacy and posturing. There is depth and humanity visible in each and every subject and that is the true art of a portrait. According to Leibovits we never get more than a tiny slice of our subject but that tiny slice transcends past the two-dimensional medium it's displayed upon and touches you mind and your heart.

Psychology of the portrait

As a portrait photographer I continuously get into the situation where I meet clients that either hate photographs of themselves or dread getting their photograph taking because they are "un-photogenic" or "always look horrible in pictures". Often when I show them quickly on the camera what I think is a great shot, they shy away from what they believe is a "terrible shot". Why do we have this idea, why can we not face a picture of ourselves? I decided to explore what happens in the brain to explain this.

The Magnificent Brain

We know from perceptual science, a lot of what we perceive the world to be is pulled from memory. If you look at a logo, you glance at it, but you know what it looks like something gets pulled out of memory and that what you see. The brain can understand an image in milliseconds and make decisions on that information in under a second. As the brain gets introduced to a situation, millions of neurons are firing to process and analyze the given raw material. Interestingly the brain finds shortcuts to process quicker, quicker is better than perfect. This is where the brain starts using previous experience and memory to make sense of the massive amount of information it receives every minute.

Mirror Mirror on the wall...

Now let's think of ourselves, how do we perceive ourselves, what is the map, where do we draw our information? It's the mirror…and what do you see in the mirror? You! An exact image of you… but in reverse. You have a very unique view as only you see yourself like this. Now we know that everyone is asymmetrical. Thus every picture that you see of yourself differs from what you have in memory.

We can say that you suffer from uncanny valley. This, in aesthetics refers to the feeling of eeriness or revulsion when presented with a human replica that appears to be human but not exactly. Examples can be found in robotics, 3d animation and lifelike dolls among others. Think of the wax figures at Madame Tussauds or the super realism of the movie Final Fantasy.

Now the theory is that when we see a picture of ourselves it almost have the same effect, it looks almost right, but not quite. Subconsciously we pick up on the little asymmetries that don't match what we're used to and so we dislike the image.

Emotional lateralization and left gaze bias

So each side of our face looks different but we also need to take emotional lateralization into consideration. This is the asymmetrical representation of emotional control and processing in the brain. A variety of scientific studies have shown asymmetrical activations when thinking of emotions, viewing emotional situations etc. and production of facial expressions appear to be asymmetric as well. Although this is very interesting, these are theories and is still being studied.

Interesting study that I found last month was about experiments on dogs and how they read emotions of humans. Then I came across the concept of the left gaze bias. While viewing faces, an adult human often demonstrates a natural gaze towards the left. So the right side of the person they're interacting with will often be inspected first and for longer periods. So just quickly the interesting bit is that dogs demonstrates the same left gaze, but only when presented with a human face and not to dog faces. So taking into consideration that our emotions are express asymmetrical and we tend to look at the right side of someone face more often if you're presented with an invert of that face, things gets interesting…

A study was conducted in the 1970s by researchers Theodore Mita, Marschall Dermer and Jeffrey Knight, where they asked participants to choose between two images of themselves, one of their actual face and the other a mirror image. They were also shown images of friends and family, real and mirror. In these studies they found people having a preference over a mirror image of themselves and the real image of their friend. Showing that they're actually not familiar with the real image of themselves.

Now you can test this with images of yourself and your friends. See which ones you prefer and which ones your family and friends prefer. You might notice that what you prefer will differ from them, so maybe consider trusting them next time as they know what you really look like!

The image of SELF...

But we're not only looking at the way the brain processes the raw material but also a view of ourselves. A study by Amber Story in 1998 has shown that our ability to remember feedback depends on whether that feedback is congruent with our own self-esteem. Also a study by Nicholas Epley and Erin Whitchurch published in 2008 suggested that people recognize their own faces as being more attractive than they are. In these experiments participant's faces were made more or less attractive using a morphing procedure. Such enhancement bias was correlated with implicit measures of self-worth but not with explicit measures, consistent with this variety of the enhancement being a relative automatic rather than deliberative process.

So just quickly to take the populatity of the selfie into consideration. It is basically the same as the mirror, creates a reverse image of you, that can be controlled according to your spesifications. That's why we love it! It captures the exact same thing as you'll find in the mirror. A photograph that is controlled by you at close proximity.

What I have noticed in my work is that people who tend to see themselves in photographs more often are much more comfortable with being confronted with the inverse of what they're used to. They brain is a fantastic thing and in a way it can be trained to accept and appreciate both version of YOU.