“To make a drawing,” comments Zwelethu Mthethwa, “you begin by facing a blank sheet of paper which must be filled, whereas with photography, the process is exactly the reverse. Starting with a full frame, you proceed by editing.” The edited moment, the precisely selected view framed by the artist’s eye, is the image that will remain as the lasting record.
In a dialogue with the eye, the camera sometimes picks up details not noticed by the photographer at the time, and at other times plays them down. Talking about a series of photos of child scavengers, Mthethwa says, “When I started to edit the images, I was struck by the gaze these kids had . . . an adult gaze . . . they are very hard . . . older than they look physically. Malnutrition has kept them small. What has not shown up is the unhealthy quality of their dehydrated skin.”
The kids in Mthethwa’s series “Contemporary Gladiators” were a group the photographer came across while taking a break in the beach resort of Pemba in Mozambique. Well away from the view of the sunbathing vacationers, the children trawl the town’s rubbish dumps daily, digging urgently for food or saleable objects. Mthethwa learned that all the boys came from dysfunctional families, often with a father who had left home to work in another area. After school they came to the dump every day, working in teams, selling what they could find and dividing the money. The children are not alone in the dump and are joined by other scavengers, such as dogs and crows.
Concentrating his camera on the children themselves, emphasizing their smallness against the drab mountains of discarded trash from which they must win their daily subsistence, Mthethwa has presented a disturbing vision of a modern dystopia.
In 2004, Mthethwa had started to work with a different group of gladiators: the sugarcane workers on his brother’s farm in Umzinto, on the south coast of KwZulu-Natal. Visiting the farm, the photographer had been struck by the androgynous appearance of the men, all of whom wore skirts of some kind. The men explained that the loose, layered clothing helps prevent chafing from sweat in the humid atmosphere. But their sinewy, skirted appearance reminded him of the samurai warriors in Japanese movies Mthethwa watched during his boyhood. These modern African warriors labor in the boiling sun day after day with one ambition: to provide a better life and job prospects for their children.
For Mthethwa it is never simply the dramatic image that causes him to raise his camera and shoot. It is the human story behind the image that, once learned, informs the way he invites the subject to collaborate in a portrait that will add yet another to his extraordinary portfolio of an Africa the tourist seldom sees.
Untitled from the “Sugar Cane” series 2007
Chromogenic print
106 x 81 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and the
Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
© Zwelethu Mthethwa
Untitled from the “Contemporary
Gladiators” series 2007
Chromogenic print
81 x 106 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and the
Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
© Zwelethu Mthethwa
Untitled from the “Contemporary
Gladiators” series 2007
Chromogenic print
81 x 106 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and the
Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
© Zwelethu Mthethwa
Untitled from the “Sugar Cane” series 2007
Chromogenic print
81 x 106 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and the
Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
© Zwelethu Mthethwa
Untitled from the “Sugar Cane” series 2007
Chromogenic print
81 x 106 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and the
Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
© Zwelethu Mthethwa