DORP*
Few years ago I’ve lived for a while in South Africa close to a town called Rustenburg. When I first saw this series by Douglas Mark Black I immediately felt “home”. This work portrays exactly, as I remember, how the space around South African suburbia looks like. The gray tones of the sky well return the feeling of abandonment, precariousness, insecurity and uncertainty which still depict southern Africa. I’ve asked Douglas to write us few lines about his research and I am very happy to have received these words back.
by Steve Bisson
«Great to speak to someone who has an understanding of where I am coming from, basically if you went due south from Rustenburg 8+ hours by car you would hit Adelaide, in the Eastern Cape, a small old ‘frontier town’ but now days a place with little ‘tourist’ interest really at all.
The series which could just as easily be entitled ‘SELF PRESERVATION’, focuses on the architectural aesthetic created by the need for physical and economic survival in ‘small town’ South Africa. This series was taken in the small town of Adelaide (South Africa) where I grew up, after returning from living in London, England for a number of years.
What has happened in this town (and countless others like it) to the traditional notion, or image of home in the urban context, is frightening. Security bars over doors, windows and patios create zoo-like enclosures for the inhabitants. In some instances windows and doors removed to an absolute functional minimalism to ensure security. Although this may allow a sense of normal ‘function’ within the dwelling itself, the resultant net effect on the urbanscape is disastrous, where the street becomes lined with a series of ‘jail homes’ or ‘jail shops’, taking the joy and freedom that having ones own home conjures up and turning it upside down.
My further elaboration on the series is that apart from my personal interest within the ‘changing hometown’ analogy, I have an architectural schooling and what I find the most concerning is at a macro scale what effect this has on the sense of community which is totally counter to what well designed suburbs and towns aspire to. As you probably are aware the traditional idea of a ‘Karoo style’ house was an open porch that faced the street where you sat drinking your brandy and interacting with people on and on opposite sides of the street, now all these ‘front porches are closed-in and venturing out becomes a dash from home to shops or vice-versa with very little opportunity for the traditional type of interaction envisaged.
What is also apparent is the desperate need for commercial viability/survival (of a typical retail store - for example) which leads to the need to do whatever it takes to attain a sale – this being done without the ability to afford professional advertising/shopfronts/lights, etc…so for instance, in the image attached, the Mercedes for sale is merely parked in front of the second hand furniture store, which is also a book store, but which also looks like its falling down because there’s no money in the first place – a combined domestic and retail aesthetic created by the situation.
One is left feeling a little hopeless for the survival of these places. Contrast this with as you say absolutely first class game reserves and facilities and one starts to grasp the strange divides that categorise South Africa, irrespective of colour.»
by Douglas Mark Black
*Title from the Afrikaans phrase ‘DORP’ meaning village/small town. This is an ongoing photographic exploration…
© All copyright remains with photographer Douglas Mark Black