Lensmen probe life of the street
BAY community gallery ArtEC is hosting a week of "cultural interventionism" with a line-up culminating this weekend. The gallery has been facilitating several collaborative events and projects between local and international "creatives", starting with a joint documentary photography exhibition that opened on Tuesday.
True Hip Hop is by US photographer Mike Schreiber, currently visiting Port Elizabeth as part of a national tour, while Reflective Encounters is a collection of black-and-white images by Port Elizabeth photographer Joubert Loots.
"True Hip Hop follows prior showings of Schreiber's vast archive of work created over the span of 12 years in London, Atlanta, Chicago, Miami and New York," Wayne Matthews, ArtEC's new gallery manager, said.
"Schreiber is a self-taught, New York-based photographer with a degree in anthropology. He focuses his lens on the all-pervasive hip- hop culture and hip-hop giants like Eminem, Mos Def, ODB, C-Murder, MIA and Method Man while, with subtle insight and stark reflection, capturing the individuals beneath the veneer of their personas," he said.
Schreiber, who is sharing 24 of his favourite shots, is visiting South Africa for the first time. He encouraged aspiring young artists to go for whatever they enjoyed, saying "everything else will follow".
Loots, who completed his national diploma in photography at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) last year, engages with people from challenging cultural, social and economic backgrounds to create compelling images.
"It is the friendships made through these encounters that have fuelled his enthusiasm for photography's ability to tell untold stories," Matthews said.
"These are the realities he hopes to share through the faces portrayed in his documentary and street photography."
NMMU photography lecturer Glenn Meyer said Loots's exhibition featured some of the photographic essays he produced for his university course work. Loots's dedication would see him through the "tough realm of social commentary and documentary photography", Meyer said.
"This genre requires great empathy with people and a keen sense of visual aesthetics, which Joubert demonstrates very well through the work shown in this exhibition."
ArtEC is also collaborating with the Athenaeum in Belmont Terrace where a street poetry session, On and Off the Street, will take place from 2pm to 4.30pm today. Then, at 5.30pm, there will be poetry and hip-hop performances by Australian poet Luka Lesson and local acts PoeticSoul, Mahambehlala and Ntsika Tyatya at ArtEC until 7pm. Both events are free of charge.
Tomorrow, Schreiber and Loots will conduct a mini-workshop at Joe Slovo Primary, and on Saturday from 10am they will join in a street procession by Artworks for Youth that will start at the same school. The week's activities will culminate in the One Blood benefit concert at the Grand Hotel in Central on Saturday from 1 to 11pm. The concert will feature New York-based hip-hop artist Jean Grae. Tickets are at ArtEC on (041) 585-3641 or obtainable via e-mail: manager@artecpe.co.za -
