Terry Kurgan
Terry Kurgan’s Joubert Park Photo Studio Project and subsequent Park Pictures project looks at the culture and economy Joubert Park in Johannesburg. The park is one of few green spaces in the dense, “Afropolitan” inner city of Johannesburg. It is surrounded by what was once a thriving retail and business center for the city’s white middle class – abandoned in the early 80’s for the suburbs, with its decentralised malls and business parks.
In its place African immigrants, refugees and poor and working class South Africans now occupy derelict apartments and office buildings once designed for other uses. Their occupation is contested, and living quarters are typically dense and fraught, with sometimes as many as 12 people living in a room designed for one. The street space is intense, chaotic and often perilous. In this context, the park is respite. It is also business territory to upwards of 40 street photographers.
Terry agreed to answer a few questions about herself and her work.
Please tell me how you got into photography
I really don’t think of myself as a photographer, rather as a visual artist who sometimes uses photography as a medium. I always made photographs and began my career as an artist in drawing and printmaking always working from my own photographs. At a certain point – it didn’t make sense to draw the photographs and the the photographs themselves became the objects of my work. And then the subject of my work.
I think that my body of work over 10 to 15 years has explored photographic meaning, in one way or another.
Did you have any particular breakout moment? Some work you did that made you (or your clients) say “a-ha!” and suddenly doors started to open?
The first time I showed a body of photographs was in 1997 for a show curated by penny Siopis – called “Purity and Danger”. The show was about taboo in the (then) contemporary South Africa. My work explored the taboos associated with photographing children. It attracted a lot of attention at the time and I think where I developed the reputation as being a photographer, and “that photographer who photographed her children without their clothes on”.
Can you describe how you came about the idea for Park Pictures?
I had done a previous project in the Park – see my website for the Joubert Park Photo studio – and it developed very naturally out of that project. I was interested in how the photographs that the park photographers have taken over many years reflect the shifting demographic of the city, and also in the relationship between photography and performance. The inherent melancholy in the act of a commissioning a shot and never collecting it. Also, was interested in the intensity of operating as the photographers do – from a fixed position in the park, with the world moving by at a pace East West across the park, day in and day out.
How did you approach the photographers?
Very directly. I told them about my interest in their work and in their customers, in migration and the city, in photography and the city. They were very generous – and spoke easily about themselves
Johannesburg city centre is often touted as a no-go area, how did you find working in the city?
Also very easy and comfortable. I had an assistant, Sipiwe Zwane, a young photographer who helped me with language and cultural issues at times.
The Joubert Park project is fascinating, how long did you spend on it?
It was on and off for a year.
How did the residents of the park accept you?
Very hard to gauge. I think they saw me as an entrepreneurial and business opportunity for the. And in truth my project had an enormous relationship with the economy of their practice!
To the viewer of your work what feeling or impression would you like to leave?
Human connection, human engagement. What is it that we all have in common…. Something like that
Right now are you working on a specific subject? If yes can you tell us more about?
I am currently working on Hotel Yeoville : a multi-media exhibition, web project, and a book publication (November 2009). The project aims to produce a social map of a neglected inner city neighborhood that is ‘home’ to a largely invisible community of migrants from all over the African continent.
The first phase of the project is an engagement with Web culture via the Internet cafes of the high street, resulting in a customized website aimed at the online immigrant community of Yeoville. The second phase of the project currently in progress, is the development of an exhibition in a prominent space on the Yeoville High Street, which is largely being produced through the public participation of Yeoville’s residents.
What are your main inspirations?
Family Histories, Early childhood, Fiction, Freud, Other artists
Which South African photographers do you admire?
David Goldblatt, David Goldblatt, David Goldblatt
What’s the hardest challenge faced by photographers in South Africa?
Getting the art market to recognise the value of their work
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