Nico Krijno
Nico Krijno is a photographer living and working in Cape Town, South Africa. JRNL Art Editor Jonathan Freemantle spoke to him.
“I also try to eliminate any exaggeration or dramatisation, especially when it comes to portraiture; I want to capture a honest mood - no hiding behind fake smiles or silly gesturing.”
“I’m also trying to get rid of all the so called “magic” techniques like mood lighting that divide us from the subjects and are usually considered enhancements of the subject or the picture. I want to strip it bare and show the truth.”
Neil Roberts
Neil Roberts is a filmmaker and photographer living and working in Cape Town, South Africa.
‘Praise You Like I Should’ is his dedication to the Jantzen family. Using photography and video, Roberts plays with the relationship between brother and sister Marcel and Henriette, and their grandparents Erma and Errol, who are raising the kids in the absence of their mother.
“That is actually their teddy bear – they removed the stuffing and climbed inside it. I love this moment in the video, because it’s something you do when you’re a child that you’ll never do again.”
Sydelle Willow Smith
Sydelle Willow Smith is a photographer and videographer living in Cape Town. JRNL chose seven images from her archives taken in South America and Africa over the past five years.
Smith’s most recent work will be shown at an exhibition on September 8 representing the culmination of the practical element of her Honours Degree in Anthropology with UCT.
“Was the dog really that golden or did I imagine it? Photography cannot capture truth but rather an interpretation or meaning, the spaces in between.”
Carrie McKee
Carrie McKee is a photographer living and working in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 2010 she began working towards a series featuring young freestyle dancers from a dance school in East Belfast.
The resulting work was exhibited at the University of Ulster’s final year show in June 2011 and has since appeared in The Guardian.
“It was a world that immediately captivated me and at the beginning I wasn’t sure why. I realised as time progressed that I was trying to address relationships in my own life.”
Natasja Fourie
This year has been a busy one for itinerant photographer Natasja Fourie. In May, her work was shown as part of the New York Photo Festival in an event curated by Whitney Johnson, Director of Photography for the New Yorker. She has exhibited in Las Palmas and New York and, this month, features in Eyemazing magazine alongside Ryan McGinley, among others. She spoke exclusively to JRNL from Bermuda as she unveiled work with the launch of her new website.
“I have to expose myself behind the camera and not hide behind it. The photographs I take of others have to be as close as self-portraits.”
Brendan Bannon
Dandora dumpsite is an island between Dandora and Korogocho, two slums in Naiorbi, Kenya. For thousands of residents of these slums the site is a factory of sorts, where items are found with a view to being sold.
Bannon says: “The site in these pictures is the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface lies a complex web of relationships.
The dump is a public health hazard, a smouldering heap of metal, plastic and organic materials. These items are fought over fiercely by those who show up there every day.”
Talitha Snow
Talitha Snow’s series ‘Clea in Wonderland’ came about when a night of babysitting turned into an impromptu fashion shoot.
JRNL Photographic Director Dylan Culhane: “The idea that everyone has a camera in their pocket creates suspicion around photographers; taking photographs of children in general is problematic. So it’s quite striking when you see a child in the mode of an adult in photography. You do have a sense of suspicion as to the motive.”
“I think my goal in this shoot was to create a sense of vulnerability, and children naturally open up, they’re very transparent. I didn’t brief her at all…she gave me that sort of presence and vulnerability.”
Dylan Culhane
NEW WORK MMXI tracks JRNL Photographic Director Dylan Culhane’s most recent experiments with multiple exposure photography. These images were taken in and around his native Cape Town, South Africa. “Looking at things you know so well forces you to find new ways of seeing.”
To this end, Culhane’s work aims to challenge and subsequently disassociate itself from the tendency to equate photography with realism.
“I regard the camera as a magical image-making contraption capable of transcending human vision.”
Sean Metelerkamp
Sean Metelerkamp is a photographer and director best known for Zef Side, a short film he made about Die Antwoord, which has brought him headaches and hero-worship in equal measure. We spoke to him on the eve of his debut exhibition about his latest work - a series of portraits from Noupoort, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre in the Northern Cape – his frayed relationship with Die Antwoord and the compulsion to take pictures for a living.
“When here I am with these people who have scars all over their faces…they’ve been through some heavy shit, and I need to react very quickly to what they’re sharing with me in that moment, and capture it in an image. It’s exciting and scary at the same time.”
Daniel McCabe
Daniel McCabe spent two weeks in Lodwar, capital of the Turkana region in northwestern Kenya, tracking cattle raids but finding what he describes as Kenya’s Wild West, where the closest refrigerated morgue is 80km away and futures are read in the entrails of a disemboweled goat.
“By reading blood clots in the intestines, the locals claim to see future conflict, drought, famine and disease…pretty much everything they predict is something horrible. Their predictions often come true.”
Akona Kenqu
As part of her year-end project at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, 23-year old Soweto based photographer Akona Kenqu spent time documenting the lives of skaters in and around Protea Glen. The images offer refreshing insight into a permutation of global skate culture which, though generally associated with white suburbia, similarly defines the cultural identity of these young men in South Africa’s largest township.
Max Mogale
Photographer Max Mogale set up an impromptu photography studio for our launch event at THE VAULT studio, paying homage to mid-century West African portraiture in the vein of Seydou Keita. If you would like a hi-res image of yourself mailed to you, please get in touch with dylan@jrnl.co.za
Photographer: Max Mogale
Art direction: Jonathan Freemantle & Latisha Duarte
Stylists: Roxzy Lok & Sara Colle
Models: Anna Freemantle & Hannah Loewenthal
Hair & Make-up: Nandi Fourie.