I predominantly work as a documentary photography. My focus is mainly on stories and themes of people who are on the margins of society. I use my lens to draw attention to their issues, challenges and aspirations. The stories of people living in the townships are the driving force behind my relentless experimentation with varied photography techniques and processes.
The overarching theme of my work is the township life experience. In three of my major photographic projects, I deal mainly with contemporary socio-economic issues. To address these issues, I use both conventional and contemporary documentary approaches. Through the conventional approach, I am more of an observer who engages with the community and journalistically document the evidence of social issues that I am confronted with. My contemporary documentary practices amplify and add vivid energy to subjects I feel strongly about. It gives me the liberty to break out of the strict boundaries of my former documentary approach. It also allows me to conceptualise my photographic approach in three ways, the
stylistic approach, aesthetics and the format of my images. I, however, do not see these styles in contrast to each other, they however complement my artistic practice and interest. My current project, Botle Botaki, is a different approach to my documentary practice. It is an all-cellphone photography project. I use just a basic smart cellphone for photography, post processing and creating digital collages.
Botle Botaki project focuses on the hand-painted portraits on the corrugated walls of informal hair salon shops in the townships. These portraits are part of the business signs which include the hair salons’ trade names in bold vivid colours. These signages are usually created by sign artists who seem to be self-taught and informally trained in portrait painting. I specifically focuses only on portrait paintings because I am fascinated by them as a uniquely South African (and African) artistic form of portraiture. My main objective is to highlight the variety of styles and techniques used in creating them. I explore the artistic possibilities
embedded in these portrait paintings by creating digital collages and abstract mixed media artworks. Influenced by the township’s hair salon portrait paintings’ aesthetics, I create my own abstract expressionistic portrait paintings.