Page 9 - David Goldblatt _ Johannessburg 1948 - 2018

‘Welcome to Silvertown,’ David said.
Where a ditch cut across the track half a dozen men were sitting on milk crates. David parked the 4X4 while Thabo went over to speak to them. I noticed the holster under his jacket.
‘We’ve been here before,’ David said. ‘They know us.’ ‘Why have you come back?’
‘The photograph didn’t work out. There was something
wrong with the film.’
Thabo made a circle with thumb and forefinger.
Permission granted.
David carried his equipment through the gate and began
setting up the tripod. Thabo wandered around chatting to people.
One of the younger men in the circle by the ditch rose and offered me his crate. When I declined, he came to stand beside me.
‘Do you have a notebook?’ he asked.
My notebook and pen were sticking out of my shirt pocket. I hadn’t intended to write anything down, but it seemed impolite not to.
‘My name is Shezi,’ he said. ‘Zimisele Shezi.’
I wrote ‘Shezi’ in my notebook.
‘You know this name?’ he asked, lips pulled down in
surprise.
‘Yes, I’ve come across it before.’
‘It’s a good name. Short.’
I laughed and after a moment he joined in.
Then he spelled Zimisele for me.
I discovered, as we spoke, that the people of Silvertown
had been there for eight months. They were moved, Shezi said, because their shacks in another part of Alex had been demolished to make way for extensions to a shopping centre. ‘This is a waiting room,’ he said. ‘They’ll move us again when they build houses for us.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you have a job?’ I was getting the hang of it.
‘I am a security.’
‘Do you work for a company?’
‘I work here.’ He gestured towards the crate-sitters. ‘We
are all security.’
It took David an hour to get the shot. The view he was
interested in included a telephone service – a couple of phones on a fold-up table – and a wire cage full of chickens. The chicken man, who may also have been the telephone man, was sitting on a chair next to the cage.
Everyone who watched David working has a story like this. Why is it taking so long? What are we waiting for?
‘I’m waiting for him to relax and look natural. He has to forget I’m here.’
The chicken man looked quite relaxed to me, he was nodding off as we spoke, but I held my tongue.
‘I’m also waiting for a chicken to look through the bars,’ David went on. ‘One of the chickens must be conspicuous. Otherwise the viewer won’t know what’s in the cage. They won’t know what this man does for a living.’
People came and went between the glaring shacks. Some of them looked our way and others didn’t. A man bumped
over the veld in a white Corolla, greeted us with a wave and disappeared down an alley. A rooster picked its way along the ditch. Crowed.
‘There’s trouble in Silvertown,’ Thabo said. ‘Some homeless people from other parts of Alex have moved in and they’re trying to make their own rules. It’s a big problem for the securities. The new people want the securities to keep the police out of the camp. They say the police dogs eat their chickens.’
Shezi reappeared. ‘Tell me: do you have to study to become a photographer?’
I told him about the Market Photo Workshop.
‘Actually I want to learn about videos,’ he said, ‘how to use a video camera, but I don’t have enough money to buy one.’ And then he asked: ‘Are you a reporter?’
While I considered my answer, David began packing up the camera. Had he found the photograph? I don’t know. I must have asked, but failed to note the answer, and now I can’t recall if I’ve seen the chicken man of Silvertown among his prints.
The Temple of Saturn
After TJ/Double Negative had been published, David and I were invited to talk about our work together at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. We met there in May 2013 and spent a few memorable days in that sociable city. Some old friends of David’s who’d emigrated to Canada came to see him and you’d think their presence would focus his attention on the past, but as usual he was full of ideas about new work he planned to make: post-apartheid memorials, portraits of ex-offenders at the scene of the crime. The structure of things now.
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