Collecting Gingers – An exhibition of the redhead species

Posted on January 30, 2013 by lauricetb

Anthea Pokroy collects gingers. When I hear that I imagine her standing up at a support meeting, guiltily surveying the room, and then confessing. I also am mildly reassured. Though not a collector, I am a ginger, and find myself drawn to other redheads, unusually interested in characters like Homeland’s Damian Lewis, Desperate Housewives “Bree Van de Kamp”, News International’s Rebekah Brooks and now in Pokroy.
It appears that once you start, there is no holding back. In just over two years Pokroy collected more than 500 gingers, photographing each one of them. Her solo exhibition “I collect gingers” opened in January, a series of portraits presented in 10 “hair groups” – a spectrum from strawberry blond to dark auburn cross-referenced against skin and eye colour. The groups constitute a racial classification invented by the artist, with sub-classifications. “It’s human nature to create hierarchies, but I haven’t suggested who is the low – I wanted the viewer to impose that,” says Pokroy. Continue reading →

The city gets a paint job from I ART JOBURG

Posted on October 11, 2012 by lauricetb

Artwork by ROA, shot by Martha Cooper. My favourite mural of the I ART Joburg series. Our Saturday walk included a stop at the Mai Mai Market that inspired ROA’s endangered Rhino installation displayed at Area3.

After a two month hiatus spent in my study (and a number of free WIFI-enabled coffee shops across the city including my current favourite Warm & Glad, on 357 Jan Smuts Avenue) finishing my M.A. dissertation, I have been released to feast on the city. Oh how I have missed that. On Saturday we took a walk with Bongani Mathebula from MainStreetWalks to view the murals that form part of the IARTJOBURG project, a brilliant initiative by Ricky Lee Gordon of /and people (love their work), adidas Originals and Plascon.

Here’s the story…

If you go down to Doornfontein today you are in for a big surprise. Look up along Sivewright Avenue as you travel in the direction of Yeoville and there hanging on the wall of an otherwise ordinary commercial face brick block is an elephant, a rhinoceros, a giraffe and three other wild creatures. They appear to be lying across the reinforced concrete beams, their limbs hang limply, and their eyes are closed. Asleep, or extinct, the artist has left it up to you to decide.

Continue reading →

Soweto’s photography collective

Posted on July 13, 2012 by lauricetb

Pimville

The photographs make you look twice. First because they are pretty, stylized shots, speaking the language of fashion photography, and then again because of their setting.

Pimville, Kliptown and Orlando in Soweto, Alexandra are not usually names that conjure the hipster lifestyle, freedom, beauty, or high fashion. Continue reading →

Split facades: photographing Joburg’s inner city

Posted on February 6, 2012 by lauricetb

Too many stories – so little time. But couldn’t leave out that on Thursday night I was at the opening of Split Facades at Goethe on Main, a debut photographic exhibition by Kutlwano Moagi, curated by a friend Thato Mogotsi. Having read Lin Sampson’s take on art openings “The Cringe Crowd” in Sunday Times (and laughed all the way through it) I am still trying to figure out which kind of art-opening hanger-on I am.

Boloba Fashion Store, corner Jeppe and Von Brandis, JHB CBD by Kutlwano Moagi

Continue reading →

Getting shot in Joburg

Posted on October 3, 2011 by lauricetb

Ponte, by "I was shot in Joburg"

It sounds like a Hollywood script. A Joburg architect on holiday in Cape Town commits a misdemeanour and gets sentenced to three months community service. Not wanting to have to return to Cape Town he proposes to the court that he contribute to a community closer to home. He comes up with the idea to work with a children’s shelter to train youngsters in how to take photographs with disposable cameras. The plan is to work towards an exhibition of their work after three months. “All I wanted was to give them a night they would never forget,” says 35-year-old Bernard Viljoen.

Cue the scene of the judge stamping “accepted” on the proposal. That was the start of the project called “I was shot in Joburg”. Now two years later an end to Viljoen’s “community service” is nowhere in sight. When I contact him for an interview after buying one of the project’s photographs at Market on Main, in Joburg inner city’s Maboneng District, he is on his way to Cape Town to launch “I was shot in Cape Town”. Bloemfontein is next. Continue reading →

iPhoneography SA exhibition in Sandton

Posted on September 4, 2011 by lauricetb

It’s reassuring to know that there’s a name for this condition. Among its symptoms are thinking that every cloud formation is worthy of a photograph, and every amusing sign or artfully arranged plate of food deserves to be captured, shared and archived.

by Zac Rusagara

Hi. My name is Laurice Taitz and I am an iPhoneographer. It’s defined as someone who uses an Apple iPhone, along with multiple editing and sharing applications (or apps), to capture the world around them; or perhaps more accurately, the world right next to them. Continue reading →

Cappuccinos I have known and loved

Posted on April 25, 2011 by lauricetb

Left one rainy city for another for an Easter break near that imposing mountain. Cape Town has toyed with us. One sunny day, one rainy day, one sunny day, one cold day, and so on. Saturday morning led us to Long Street in a city that really seems to work for itself. Long Street ties it all together with its appeal to the cosmo-hippie-boho-bergie-Euro set. The antiques arcade – a real find – and Clarke’s awesome bookstore with its incredible selection of local literature sit side by side with a bar carrying huge signs advertising R10 a shooter (visions are conjured, and they are nor pretty), surf shops, a German barber and my latest find, Yours Truly, home of the artistic cappuccino. Or at least home to Sakky, the guy behind the counter that ended my search for cappuccino art. Definitively.
For the past few months I have taken to photographing my daily cup. Continue reading →

Joburg photographer Jodi Bieber, top World Press Photo award-winner

Posted on March 26, 2011 by lauricetb

“Once you put your work out there you can’t control how people respond, but you want a response.” Tuesday night we were listening to Jodi Bieber (no relation of Justin) talk about her photography at Vega’s Johannesburg Campus. Having just won one of photojournalism’s highest honours – the World Press Photo of the Year Award – seems to have left her largely unaffected. Proud of the achievement and the global focus that it has put on the plight of women under Taliban rule in Afghanistan she spent less time on the award than she did on talking about her personal portfolio of work, all set in South Africa. Continue reading →

Joburg by night – what the Randlords saw

Posted on January 8, 2011 by lauricetb

Back in this rainy town with its broody leaden skies after weeks away. It’s good to be home. I had forgotten to post this pretty photo taken from Randlords (the uber chic nightclub) in Braamfontein sometime in early December. I wasn’t the one to snap it (the Randlords gig was invitation-only and I had no intention of pretending to be older than I already am just to crack the Greenside High School 25-year matric reunion.) Continue reading →

Public art in Joburg/the world comes to Sandton

Posted on December 5, 2010 by lauricetb

Marcus Neustetter's "Erosion"

Go to Sandton Square for the Public Art around the World exhibition. On Tuesday night on a corner of Sandton – called Burghers Walk – I was last at during the height of World Cup fever I witnessed an extraordinary performance by Marcus Neustetter. Titled “Erosion” it involved thousands of brilliantly-lit neon glowsticks being thrown down a stairway in the darkness by a troupe of performers dressed in workman’s overalls who then proceeded to sweep up every last brilliant piece of light, bundling them back into trashcans to be carried off. A comment on the fragility and impermanence of the world of imagination and dreams, Continue reading →