Bonani Africa Online Exhibition 2010

Chris Ledochowski

Petros Mulaudzi of Nthabalala village

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My intention is to show aspects of village life through photographic images. These are just fragments of a much bigger picture of rural life; basic elements such as water, fuel, food, crafts, implements, crops, livestock etc. The skills used to access and create these elements have been traditionally passed on from elders to youth. But much of this is disappearing within the New South Africa.

I have been working off and on for almost thirty years on a project in this village, documenting the life of a man named Petros Mulaudzi and his family. In February 2010 I returned to Nthabalala to continue my project and research with the help of funding granted by Prohelvetia. As in most cases, one ends up taking photographs that do not necessarily fall within the ambit of the project at hand. This essay is a collection of such images. Although rather abstract and generalised, the essay addresses the same concerns as my highly personalised long term project on Mr Mulaudzi, namely the importance of both cultural heritage as well as individual creative experience in the bid to survive in a changing environment.

When arriving in the village I customarily visit the chief’s kraal to announce my presence. However the chief was not there, so I stopped by the tribal office. On the wall were two posters; one explaining the symbols of our New Coat of Arms and the other the Vision and Mission statements of the Municipality of Makhado. Needless to say, their content, as well as medium of language (English), seemed somewhat removed from the realities of this vhaVenda village. In this essay I ask that the viewer initially reflect on the content of these posters (shown in introductory image) before looking through the photographs. This is not intended as some conceptual artistic exercise but rather simply a way of reminding the viewer of these two different worlds; one of generic concepts and ideals and the other actual segments of given reality in the form of seemingly arbitrary photographic images.

The province of Limpopo is one of the most impoverished and underdeveloped in South Africa. Service delivery, especially to remote areas such as Nthabalala, is sparse. Electricity is available but in many instances not affordable or impractical. Water supply, available from communal taps, is erratic and limited. The community is still living under the control and governance of local tribal authority. Those individuals who are resourceful and motivated are still able to survive off the land but the majority of the village have fallen victim to social grants, saving schemes and higher purchase deals.

Self sufficiency has been largely replaced by the malaise of dependency. Is this due to the narrowing gap between rural and urban? Will village life eventually become obsolete?

About Chris Ledochowski

Chris Ledochowski was born in 1956 in Pretoria. He spent most of his youth in Johannesburg and from 1968 to 1974 he attended Waterford KaMhlaba, a private boarding school in Swaziland. After completing his A and O Level Cambridge Certificates, Ledowchowski went to Krakow Academy of Fine Arts in Poland, for a year, as a visiting student. In 1976 Ledochowski was conscripted into South African military service. From 1977 to 1980 he studied to obtain a diploma in Fine Arts at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town (UCT) where he majored in photography. In 1981 he worked for commercial film companies in Johannesburg and the following year he became the co-founder of Afroscope Film Unit, an alternative film and video company in Johannesburg.

In 1983 Chris Ledochowski joined the Afrapix Photographic Agency and was included in the Staffrider exhibition. From 1983 to 1984, he established the film and video unit for the Carnegie Inquiry into Poverty and Development as part of the South African Labour Development Research Unit (SALDRU) situated at the UCT.

In 1985 he contributed to Cordoned Heart a book of essays by twenty South African photographers, prepared for the Second Carnegie Inquiry into Poverty and Development in Southern Africa. Ledochowski also began a portrait business in the Cape Flats; in this he hand painted and framed the portraits he took. He exhibited some of these in 1986 at the Market Photo Gallery, Johannesburg, in a solo show entitled Hand Coloured Portraits from the Cape Flats. In the same year – 1985 – Chris Ledochowski began documenting the formation and development of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and affiliated unions in the Western Cape.

From 1986 to 1987 Ledochowski worked for SALDRU on the Atlantis Project, documenting the community of the town of Atlantis outside Cape Town and produced a travelling exhibition from that. From 1987 to 1988 he worked in conjunction with the Critical Health Project and the Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) in Paarl, Cape Town, for Afrapix. During this time he had an exhibition for Medico International. In 1988 he co-established the Cape Town Branch of Afrapix at Community House and held photographic workshops for the Cape Artists Project’s (CAP) Media Project. In 1991 Chris Ledochowski worked on an Oxfam Project documenting black and Model B education in Cape Town. The following year he co-researched, edited and printed the Mzabalazo Pictorial History of the ANC for the Mayibuye Centre at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), producing an exhibition and publication. During the same year he completed a project on Venda which became an exhibition, Ten Years After: A Return to Nthabalala Village, Venda, at the Mayibuye Centre in UWC, in 1993; and at the Bat Centre in 1996.

Hand Coloured Photos in Ceramic Frames: A Collaboration between Photographer and Ceramist was exhibited at the Cape Gallery in Cape Town, in 1995; this went on to Museum Africa in Johannesburg in 1996; then later, in 1997, it went to Grahamstown. In 1998 he worked for L’Afrique par Elle- Meme at the Maison Europeene de la Photographie in Paris. Since then he has been freelancing for different publications and lives in Cape Town.

Ledochowski completed a book called Cape Flats Details and published a first edition with South African History Online and Unisa Press in 2003. The 2nd edition of the book is now available in 2008 (more). The images from the book were exhibited at the 2003 Italian Biennale. To view the exhibition online, click here.

References

• Ledochowski, C. (2003) Cape Flats Detail: Life and Culture in the Townships of Cape Town. Pretoria: South Africa History Online & UNISA Press.
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