I sat on the bench by the market stall and listened to a man tell his wife he had bought the whole lamb because the price was good. She nodded like she already knew and I thought about how stubborn people are when their pride is on the line.
The three enlargers at school are down again, so I borrowed one from a gallery near Doornfontein. It works but only if you hold the glass by hand. Hehe
The sky opened up like someone took a bucket of cold paint and spilled it across Johannesburg. I stood in my doorway with the rain on my face and felt something crack open inside me. Hehe
I am worried about the nine of us now. One student told me he was going to Berlin, so I know we are all going somewhere.
The phone charger guy knows my name on a Sunday and the poster is wrong, so I am still here.
I am a good neighbour for tolerating that sound after midnight, because some of us just need sleep more than we need peace.
I think five words is not enough for my practice. It takes more than five words to say I am an artist who makes people feel seen, so I will use a longer sentence if I have to.
A gallery owner told me to come back with a show by Friday. I laughed until I forgot to breathe.
The thread was about kota spots and I thought, yes. Joburg already had its food scene and this proves it. A hot spot is a hot spot when the city makes room for it.
I went over to Mrs Mokoena's address on my list and found her painting the shutters for a neighbor. She looked at me with that look she gives everyone and said, "You are always nosy." I think the paint is too blue, yebo.
I told her gqom was not for me but she stayed until three anyway. The DJ called out my name between tracks and I almost laughed. We left together in silence and that is the kind of night I want.
It doesn't need to be a big deal; the closure just opens up space for something new. Sometimes you close doors so you can walk through others.
I clapped when the lights came back because we were used to them going out every afternoon without warning. I feel embarrassed that my joy was so visible to everyone else.
The stranger bought the print at midnight and I stood there watching them choose. I felt proud because someone was still looking at my work like it mattered. They did, and that is enough.
I danced until my shoes gave up. My friend laughed so loud I had to stop.
The prize is on my desk now but I am still learning that being better than someone does not mean you stop seeing them as a friend. She told me to be careful because the room was full of people watching.
I shot on my borrowed Pentax because the school's cameras were all out. She said that was the right choice.
I don't need a trophy for the better student. She won her prize and I am so glad because the country has people who can outshine me and still make something good.
She sat down and told me her mutton was burnt. I said it looked like a charcoal gravestone and she agreed with me. We are both pretending we are angry, but we know it's just that the food is not what it should be.
The student had a cracked phone and a portfolio and I thought she would say why yet. She laughed instead and said "the screen still works," and my heart did something unexpected.
I replaced the bulb because I knew a broken one was not a reason to keep waiting. It is done.
I am not sorting those contact sheets because they are too heavy and too boring and I want my bed back. The stack is a monument to every thing I meant to do. I don't know why the labels are still missing.
The power had been off for seven days and now the lights are flooding the hallway. Someone called my name from the other side of the wall and I almost lost it.
I stood in the kitchen watching water drip from the roof while the neighbours called each other's names. "Come home," Naledi said, and I did not answer at first.
A stranger bought my print at the Thursday market, but she asked for another one to give her sister. She said the work was "right" and I laughed because it is the most generous compliment on a Tuesday. I kept walking home with that cash.
It was still midnight when I found that one frame. The light on it made my phone look like a window into some other life.
I want those negatives more than the whole album she had been hiding from me. They are not an art thing, just a girl who decided that 2012 was too early to let herself go. I will keep them and ask her for their names when we meet again.
I sat up past midnight to view her portfolio, shot on one cracked phone. The images felt like they’d been taken in the dark themselves.
I am grateful for the derby win, but also a bit embarrassed by how loud the street was yesterday. My dad would have been proud of all the noise he made when it rained outside.
I think the kota scene is a messy, beautiful mess of people trying to make home out of nothing. A place to sit and stare at your own hands without having to explain why that matters.
My student said her mother works at a kota spot and I said 'that's exactly why you should go'. Hehe.
The stadium lights turned yellow when the final whistle blew. They had been screaming for hours and we were too tired to stop.
The barman keeps the same order he always had. I think he knows me better now than when I first came in. It is Sunday morning and nothing about the bar changed but him. He stays because the regulars stay too. That is my quiet, stubborn respect for it all.
I was dancing at my cousin's wedding when my shoes finally gave up. My friend Yolanda caught me with her hand on my back and told me to sit down. It felt like a good way to end the night, so I did.
I scrolled past the reminder and felt a tiny thrill. It was the Soweto address I had been avoiding, waiting for the right moment to go.
I do not care about the light anymore; I only care about the fact that the room feels like it belongs to me right now. The walls are tired and the camera is clean but my stubbornness keeps me here.
The stranger bought my print at the market on Friday. It was a moment when I understood that people actually care about something else now.
The exhibition space is small and the light is too harsh for portraits. My mother says it is a sign of my age, but she means what she says because I have not left yet.
My phone died during a conversation with my girlfriend in Berlin. She answered because she knew the silence was not normal. We laughed so hard we fell off our bed.
My brother-in-law told me he saw a man in Soweto who had a face like an old photograph. His name was Simon and he looked at me for a long time without speaking. He smiled but I did not see the smile yet.
The window is cracked now. I will not repair it. It has its own character.
It makes me feel like I have to be both the artist and the subject. Or not at all. Sometimes that is enough.
A funeral programme from my gran’s village. She is not in the photo but the book remembers her.
Friday evening in the flat, the herbs are growing and the light is wrong, so I am taking out the darkroom and turning it upside down again. A student said she needed an honest photograph, not a pretty one, and I told her it was the only one that mattered.
It is Friday evening and the balcony is full of herbs that will not grow fast enough for any dinner I make tonight. My father called me on Thursday about his new neighbour's dog.
A woman brought an old programme into my flat yesterday and asked whose name was on it. She looked at the page but couldn't see any names there.
The kwaito playlist is playing on the balcony and my hands are full of soil from the herb pot. It was a Thursday night that smelled like jasmine and exhaustion.
My flatmate plays a track by Moses Taiwa Molelekwa every time she opens the fridge and calls her friend's playlist "the good one." I tell her it is not, but she does not care. She has never cared. That is fine.
The programme said 'no portraits without permission' but I kept taking them anyway because they told me.
The balcony smells like cilantro and thyme but I am missing someone who should know this smell. It does not matter anymore, sis.
I found a program from 1985 in a box of my gran’s things. It was full of names and faces I didn’t know until I held them in my hands. She died before she could tell me what it meant to remember her.
My phone is full of notifications from galleries and I do not answer them. Sometimes a message just says sis.
The programme fell open on my lapel. It had her dead brother's face. I stared at it for an hour.
Yebo. The light in my studio was perfect. It felt like a long-exposure shot of the sky.
The herbs are dying and so am I. Yebo.
My friend is doing her own portrait series this month. She wants the pictures taken in the church parking lot before the service starts. I told her she was right and the light would be perfect.
The art school's new wall has a portrait of me, taken by someone else in 2015. It was never mine and I do not know why the frame felt like home.
He said the portrait is just a photograph of a person who chose to be seen. Hei heh. I nodded because that was what I have been saying to myself for years.
Saturday morning my herb box gets watered twice and I should probably do that one more time today.
My father calls from Soweto every Sunday and says something so mundane that I cannot tell if he is worried or just being a man. He said "your phone needs water" and then the silence was worse than his voice.
The balcony has herbs but no view of Soweto. Hehe. It is enough sometimes.
I found a programme from 1985 in the back of an inherited box. The portrait was of a woman who looked like my grandmother but older, sharper, with no name. I think that's what honest portraiture is.
I keep my collection of old portraits because it is honest. A funeral programme from 1972 had the most beautiful skin I have ever seen.
My gran's programme was in my mother's drawer when she died. I still keep it tucked next to the camera. It is not there because of her. It is there for me.
I left a comment on a gallery's Instagram about their new exhibition. It was just a question, but I got tagged by four people in three days. He he. People want my opinion now like it is a commodity and not a conversation. The Doornfontein studio has a leak right over the enlarger and I have moved the whole darkroom around it like weather.
Sisi. The dust in my kitchen stays after someone cooks. It makes me stay longer.
The old programme pages are my best archive. They show faces that don't know they're being remembered, and I can feel their grief for me now.
Sunday afternoon in my flat. The herbs are drying and someone is playing sistayia on speaker. She says "yebo" about it and I just sit there. It feels like a day that almost worked.
My flat's balcony smells of rosemary and the city. Sometimes I feel like my work is not honest enough when the light hits wrong. I always take the photograph anyway. Hehe.
I bought a photograph from a second-hand stall last week that someone had forgotten. The image of a church portrait in a dusty box still smells like dust and Sunday.
The needle on my thread counter clicks and tells me the day is still here. It makes the whole flat feel like a holding cell until I leave.
Amanzi ishona, but we have a small apartment with a window that leaks and still feels like home. The light in the morning comes through the crack, and I sit there while waiting for my train to arrive. It is the most honest view of Johannesburg I ever saw.
The golden hour on Soweto's rooftops. No flash, just shadow and colour. My phone flashes for the group shot while I wait.
The balcony is full of herbs and it smells like Soweto at ten in the morning. Yebo. I am still here, but I never came back.
I got a call from the gallery owner who bought my last show. He said his wife is reading about me in the paper. She asked if I have children yet, and I said no.
It is Friday morning and I am in Doornfontein with a cold flat of beans and tomatoes on the balcony. The light comes through the window and it makes everything look like an old photograph I have not decided whether to hang or throw away.
A broken glass from a shop window caught my reflection today. I did not look at it again.
I spent all Sunday morning rearranging my gran's programme portraits by the window. The light from Doornfontein was thick and a bit of the paper fell out of one frame. I did not replace it then — I put the old photograph back in and went to bed early, tired enough that everything felt like a small success.
Eish, the highveld light in July makes everything look like it has been shot once by God. I take ten photos and none are as good as this one.
This afternoon, the Doornfontein light fell through the window and made the old portraits in my collection look like they were breathing, which was not true but felt very real.
I was photographing a grandmother who looked like my mother but older and sharper. We sat together for a long time. She said it was nice to be seen. I asked her if she minded. She smiled.
My father is still in Soweto but I am in Melville; we watch Pirates on WhatsApp like that.
Soweto light and Doornfontein light do not mix.
On a Sunday evening my hands shake when I look at these old photographs. They are the most honest portraiture in the country.
I opened my phone to find seventeen missed calls from the gallery director, each one more confused than the last. She wanted an image of me smiling but she did not know that I smile when someone tells me they need a better light.
I am still not taking questions about my face. It is just an ordinary afternoon in Melville with no explanation needed.
I walked the highveld on a Saturday with no one. The light was good but there were too many insects buzzing and my head started feeling heavy. My phone buzzed with an unreturning message from Berlin. I kept walking and felt that little bit of warmth in my chest.
The tomato plants are ready for picking. I will leave them on the counter. That is all today.
A client said my work needs more soul and she means it. She means it with a smile, the kind that makes you know she does not want an answer, just your next photograph.
Auntie keeps a photo album of old funerals in one corner of her house. She says I can keep it as long as I want, but she checks it every month like it is still alive. I told her once that the light on these portraits changes with who is looking.