a.magazine’s African Interview Series

Sue Johnson is a photographer who spends her time in between New York City, USA, and Cape Town, South Africa. In 2005, Ms. Johnson and South African photographer, Alistair Berg, founded Isilo Labantu (“Eye of the People”), an organization that introduces photography to residents of Cape Town townships.

Isilo Labantu photographers study the fundamentals of photography, meet once a week to critique their work with professional photographers, and sell their work in the galleries and shops around Cape Town. In addition, several times a year, they enter a particular neighborhood for a “Flash Photo Weekend”: documenting daily life for a 48-hour period before hanging selected images in a public display, often on clotheslines, the sides of houses, taxi ranks, community centers, and street corners.

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Explain the birth of Isilo Labantu. How, when and why did the idea of the organization arise? How did you and Alistair Berg come to work together, and what are your roles now?

Alistair and I came to this project in very different ways. But it was inevitable that we connected and joined forces. In 2003 my husband and I were in desperate need of a sabbatical from New York City. Joe is an independent radio producer, and I am a photographer and new media producer. Cape Town was the obvious choice once we got a fix on its unbelievable cultural mix and beauty.

Shortly after we arrived, I befriended a woman, named Momtolo, from Site C, Khayalishta. Momtolo was the housekeeper for a friend of a friend. I asked her dozens of questions about her life: how did she pay for her transportation, how did she manage grocery shopping, how much did it cost to get to the doctor, how did she make her meager salary stretch to feed her extended family? Momtolo was incredibly candid. She began showing me around her neighborhood and I began photographing there every week. I worked digitally so that I could print everything at home and bring photos with me on each visit. Momtolo and I were a good team. She began pointing out things she knew would pique my interest: warm sunlight in someone’s kitchen, flowers growing out of a sandy front yard, a fresh coat of paint on a dilapidated door. By the end of the year I had amassed a great body of work. The only logical thing to do with the work was to hang an exhibition in her front yard, on the clothesline, which happened to border a very busy intersection. It was the most satisfying thing I have ever done. People came by all morning long, asking why we were showing pictures, pointing out their friends and relatives in the photos, running home to fetch them, and asking us to do it again soon.

I returned to the States with the hope of raising a little money for Momtolo’s community. I put the work online and sent out emails to friends and family. The response was overwhelming. I sold hundreds of photographs and was suddenly sitting on what, by South African standards, was a substantial amount of money. I pondered for a long time how to best use it. And then the answer became obvious: train photographers from the townships. And that’s what I was pursuing when one of my contacts put me in touch with Alistair. We began emailing and realized our visions meshed.

It turns out that the clothesline model is a perfect one for our group of photographers, and we replicated it on a much larger scale in Site C in Khayelitsha in 2005. We set up a mobile studio in a friend’s garage with computers, battery chargers, and enough peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to get us through the weekend. From sunup on Friday to sundown on Saturday, the group roamed the neighborhood documenting life there. We printed all Saturday night and hung an exhibition on the side of a spaza shop near the taxi rank. We hired a local dance troop to entertain the masses as they wandered through. It worked perfectly and these Flash Photo Weekends, as we have come to call them, have become a regular part of the group. We are able to edit on site so we can offer feedback like suggesting a photographer to return to a particular home when the sun starts to set and the light deepens, or at bedtime as ten people negotiate several mattresses in a single room. Mostly, we ask again and again, “what is this photograph about? What are you trying to say here?”

The photographers improve by leaps and bounds every time we do this. And, we are amassing a large and amazing body of work, which we are now selling in tourist shops and turning into a book. Several of the photographers are making a living selling portraits in their communities or working for newspapers and magazines. And many more are supplementing their income (or their family’s income) with sales of cards and prints that we market in shops in Cape Town.

I am living in New York City at the moment. Alistair and his family live in Cape Town. We are in touch via email (thanks to Skype) and I return to Cape Town regularly. When I am in town we do as many Photo Weekends as we can. This past trip we did a lot of strategizing for the group. We found studio space in downtown Cape Town, which we desperately needed. Now the photographers have a place where they can edit their work and meet with each other throughout the week. Alistair meets with the group every week and is in constant communication with the photographers. Back in NYC I am doing some fundraising and starting to put the book together. We want to get it on the shelves for the 2010 World Cup.

How many photographers are a part of Isilo Labantu? How did they come to be a part of the organization?

Everyone has a different story about how they came to the group. Some were in a loose collective that has since disbanded. Others came through AMAC (Arts and Media Access Centre), where they were taking art classes. Unfortunately, AMAC has since disbanded as well. There are so few resources for artists and photographers from the townships so word has gotten out. People have brought in their friends and siblings. Sometimes they stay around for just a few photo shoots, and sometimes they get hooked. There is a steady core of about six photographers, who are mentors to the more novice photographers.

The photographers use donated digital cameras. Where do these cameras come from, and what other type of support makes the organization possible?

Every year I send out a request for used equipment and get a dozen cameras to add to our stock. Most Americans are on their second- or third-generation equipment so there are plenty of old cameras lying around in closets. The early cameras are great to learn on. But, we have come to realize that we need to be teaching everyone the same camera. Otherwise, there is a learning curve each time someone takes a camera out. So, for the Photo Weekends we keep about ten Canon Powershot S70s, which we buy on Ebay whenever we see a good deal come up. We don’t want the equipment to be too fancy since theft is a big concern in the townships. The Powershots are fantastic cameras, and the caliber of the work is such that the images deserve to be made with high quality cameras.

We got a grant from the Open Society to create alternative distribution models for photography around the world. We have also received some very generous donations from individuals. It is one of those projects that is easy lifting: we have kept our goals modest and we are growing slowly so that it’s all manageable considering that Alistair and I both have busy lives.

What is the most rewarding aspect of Isilo Labantu?

The most rewarding…. In the same way that the Photo Weekends work on many levels, the whole project works on many levels. It’s exciting to see the work. It’s fresh and honest. It’s rewarding to see the progress that each photographer makes, even within just one weekend shoot. It’s such a great feeling when we are editing thousands of images in one day to see a clear vision take shape in one photographer’s body of work. And the sum is much larger than its parts. The group has developed a body of work that I am certain is unparalleled in it’s depth and examination of life in the townships today and the fact that people are making a living in a place where steady work is a rarity.

As a professional photographer, how has the organizing Isilo Labantu and the work of its photographers influenced your own art?

Working with Iliso Labantu has changed not just my photographs but how I see the everything. I see South Africa as a microcosm of the world: the growing disparity between rich and poor, the uneasy but beautiful mixing of tradition and modernity, and the separate worlds we construct and inhabit due to fear, ignorance and a reluctance to be outside our own comfort zone. I try to make images that depict these issues, but often I find that the power of the image is waning here in the United States (not so in South Africa though where I am often humbled by people’s excitement when they get a photograph of themselves.) I find myself gravitating to projects that create community around these issues. Iliso Labantu does that in a myriad of ways.

How do you envision the future for Isilo Labantu?

We love having our own space, and now it is time to get all the photographers proficient with computers. Until this year, Alistair and I did all of the editing but we want to hand that over to the photographers. This will help them in the marketplace as they seek more commissions, but even more so, this will remove the mediation that Alistair and I can’t help but bring to the table. We would like to step back and stay out of the way as the photographers hone their vision.

If you could meet any African artist—author, painter, sculptor, musician, lyricist, singer, designer—who would it be? Why?

I’ve already had the great fortune of getting to know the South African photographer David Goldblatt. He has been instrumental in helping me think about the role Iliso Labantu has in documenting post-apartheid South Africa. And he has been a friend and mentor, influencing my own work and expanding my mind with the stories he collects while traveling across the country in his kitted-out camper.

As far as meeting new artists, there is a gorgeous contemporary design aesthetic emerging in South Africa. I would love for Iliso Labantu photographers to collaborate with some of these artists on new projects. I think we are all trying to make an honest assessment of our own traditions and communities, myself included, and I think we could make some fabulous work together.

For more images and information visit: www.ilisolabantu.org.