Photography and the Future in Jansje Wissema's Images of District Six

Bibliographic Data

ID5775779
AuthorsKylie Thomas (0000-0002-4157-0734, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume15
Issue2-3
Pages283-305
Publication date2014-07-03
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSafundi (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1543-1304 • E-ISSN: 1753-3171
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17533171.2014.925650
OpenAlexW1987936223
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited5

This paper focuses on photographs taken in District Six during the time of forced removals by South African photographer Jansje Wissema. It explores both the history of their making and how these images can be deployed as tools for thinking the post-apartheid condition. The paper engages with Ariella Azoulay's argument in the Civil Contract of Photography (Citation2008) about the connections between photographic practices and citizenship in order to think about how photographs taken under apartheid can be understood as addressed to the future. Thanks to Alastair Douglas, Michael Godby, Brian Michael Muller, the reviewers who commented on this article, and to Haroon Gunn-Salie for his inspiring work. I am grateful to Sergio Alloggio for reading my work and discussing it with me. I would also like to acknowledge the support of Thumeka Mantolo and Jaine Roberts at the Research Office at Rhodes University during the time I taught in the Fine Art Department there.Notes1 Baldwin, No Name in the Street, 22.2 Benjamin, Collected Writings, 578.3 It is important to note here that while the apartheid state destroyed the physical site of District Six it remains present in multiple ways-through the memories of those who lived there; as a public site of recall, redress and memory production primarily through the work of the District Six Museum; and as one of the most highly visible and contested land claims in post-apartheid South Africa. There is also now a relatively large body of writings about the District, both in the form of fiction and autobiography as well as scholarly works, and there are several books of photographs of the area before and during its destruction. A useful select bibliography for researching the history of forced removals in the Western Cape that lists many of the key sources on District Six was compiled by Allegra Louw in 2010 and is available through the African Studies library, University of Cape Town (http://www.lib.uct.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/asl/groupareas.pdf). Photographic books include George Hallett and Peter McKenzie's 2007 District Six Revisited; Jan Greshoff's The Last Days of District Six published by the District Six Museum in 1996; and People Apart: 1950s Cape Town Revisited, Photographs by Brian Heseltine edited by Darren Newbury and published in 2013. Also significant is Paul Alberts Children of the Flats, which was published in 1980.4 The sub-heading, The World of Jansje Wissema, is a translation of the title of Rykie Van Reenen's Die Wêreld van Jansje Wissema which was published in Afrikaans in Cape Town in 1976.5 Warne, "Photography and New Media."6 Van Reenen, Die Wêreld van Jansje Wissema, 19.7 Ibid., 21. Wissema photographed many of her friends and several of these portraits appear in Die Wêreld van Jansje Wissema.8 Ibid., 33.9 Robert Greshoff, the brother of Adrian, identifies the backdrop as an 8 sheet Steinlen Lithograph poster that featured in the sitting room of their family home. See Greshoff, "Jansje Wissema and her South African Cow Parsley Photogram," 2013.10 Jan Greshoff was a Professor of Architecture at Stellenbosch University who took hundreds of photographs of District Six. These images were the subject of an exhibition at the District Six Museum that resulted in the publication of The Last Days of District Six, a book that focuses on the architecture of the District.11 The same child is the subject of a portrait included in District Six, a book by Adam Small that contains photographs by Wissema. In that image the size of the wheel is exaggerated by the camera angle.12 This image is one of two photographs included in the book in which Wissema's signature is visible. In this image it appears in the bottom left-hand corner.13 District Six Revisited, edited by photographers George Hallett and Peter McKenzie, contains images by the photographers listed here and was published in South Africa in 2007.14 Approximately 66,000 people were forcibly removed from District Six.15 Swanson and Harries, "'Ja! So Was District Six! But It Was a Beautiful Place': Oral Histories, Memory and Identity," 63.16 Bickford-Smith, "The Origins and Early History of District Six to 1910," 43.17 Rassool and Prosalendis, Recalling Community in Cape Town: Creating and Curating the District Six Museum, 177.18 Ibid.19 Ibid.20 See the testimonies of people who were forcibly removed included in Field, Lost Communities, Living Memories: Remembering Forced Removals in Cape Town and Rassool and Prosalendis, Recalling Community in Cape Town: Creating and Curating the District Six Museum.21 Biko, I Write What I Like, 61.22 Hallett and McKenzie, District Six Revisited, 20.23 Soudien and Jeppie, The Struggle for District Six: Past and Present, 5.24 Ibid., 13.25 Fredericks, "Creating the District Six Museum," 13.26 Prosalendis et al., "Punctuations: Periodic Impressions of a Museum," 80.27 Smith and Rassool, "History in Photographs at the District Six Museum," 131.28 Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography, 104.29 Ibid.30 Ibid., 105.31 Ibid., 97.32 Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography, 25.33 Ibid., 85.34 Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography, 37.35 For the history of the apartment buildings in the background of Wissema's photograph see Shamil Jeppie's moving account of returning with former resident Menisha Collins to the Bloemhof Flats (renamed "Kaapse Huis" after the forced removals) and the trauma of finding them "literally sanitized" (113) and "dead" (115) in his chapter, "Modern Housing for the District: the Canterbury and Bloemhof Flats," 2001.36 Swanson and Harries, "'Ja! So Was District Six! But It Was a Beautiful Place': Oral Histories, Memory and Identity," 63.37 Rive, Writing Black, 5.38 Brand, Dollar, "Africa, Music, and Show Business: An Analytical Survey in Twelve Tones Plus Finale."39 Benjamin, Collected Writings, 258.40 Werckmeister, Icons of the Left: Benjamin & Eisenstein, Picasso & Kafka after the Fall of Communism, 12.41 Ibid., 156.42 See for instance Beyers, "The Cultural Politics of 'Community' and Citizenship in the District Six Museum, Cape Town," 360 and Rassool, "Remaking Cape Town: Memory Politics, Land Restitution and Contests of History," 13.43 Among these are "Figures and Fictions," curated by London-based South African Tamar Garb, showed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2011 and led to the publication of a book containing photographs by many of the most significant contemporary South African photographers; The Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life, curated by Okwui Enwezor and Rory Bester and exhibited first at the International Centre for Photography in New York in 2013, then in Germany, Italy and finally in Johannesburg this year, traces the history of South African photography from the Drum Decade to the present. Paul Weinberg's The Other Camera: South African Vernacular Photography opened at the University of Michigan in 2014 and offers insight into the works of many previously unknown South African photographers.44 The Cape Town Heritage Trust was founded in 1987 and according to the mission statement on the organization's website, aims to "conserve the architectural, cultural and natural environs of Cape Town for the benefit of the inhabitants of the city and the nation at large" (http://www.heritage.org.za/home/about-us/mission).45 District Six Reference Group, "Technical Team Position Paper on Restitution and Related Matters," 29.46 District Six Reference Group, "Technical Team Position Paper on Restitution and Related Matters," 30.47 Rive, Writing Black, 145.48 In this regard see my critique of the South African National Development Plan (NDP), co-authored with Sergio Alloggio, and the collection of position pieces included in the special issue of Social Dynamics on the NDP

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