Pictures of people — and life

Photographs. Faces. Each face a person; each person different; and each different person an inspiration. A boxer, a beggar, a steelworker, a paramedic, an artist, a biker, a sangoma, a priest’s son. Framed in black and white, each intimate portrait is part of Justin Dingwall’s exhibition Portraying Life at the Imaging Hub Photographic Studio in Pretoria.

“Life’s too short to be mediocre”

Written for and published in Altitude Magazine

Reg Lascaris was a chubby child who liked white mice. He is now President of the Africa, Middle East, Mediterranean and Eastern European region of the TBWA global advertising group and creative agency, and the founding partner of TBWA Hunt Lascaris, South Africa. “And I’m less chubby”, he laughs.

Peaches and Dreams

Written for and published in AbouTime Magazine

Think about peaches. Fresh peaches filled with the juice of summer, dried peaches, delicious reminders of seasons past. Peach preserves, spiced and sticky. Fiery peach mampoer and warming brandies, peach scented beauty products, peach blossom, canned peaches and fresh farm cream, long days and lots of sunshine…There is something about the peach that epitomises country living, in all its simple abundance. The farmer is alchemist, spinning earth and water and sunshine into orbs of delicious gold.

Des and Dawn: A Fairy Tale

Written for and published in Indwe Magazine, March 2007

They were performing together in the back row of the chorus of a production of the Vagabond King at Wits University. “Dawn was a barefoot flower child, in painting smocks with hair down to her waist”, Des remembers, “and Des looked like a Viking and sang folks songs, and had a captivating smile”, adds Dawn. Thus began one of South Africa’s most enduring personal and professional partnerships. Des and Dawn Lindberg are entering their fifth decade together, in an industry known for its personal and professional break-ups.

Cricket@Skukuza

The beautiful Kruger landscape is home to an amazing array of fauna, flora, and, on occasion, cricketers! The cricket oval near Skukuza is a hidden gem, carefully maintained in amidst the Kruger bushveld. The players? An assorted bunch of Scientists, Rangers, Field Guides and community members from Skukuza, Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, and the SANParks online forums, who plan to come out in the summer sun to play cricket and raise funds for SANParks!

A Sense of unease

Wim Botha, Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year winner for Visual Art is erudite and reserved, accommodating and wary, as he talks about his exhibition Premonitions of War on display at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. “I work with art history, but not Art History as an academic discipline”, explains Botha. He draws on iconic and venerated images from art and religion over the ages, “things that people perceive as being great” he says, “for whatever reason.

Treasure magically imagined

By mixing sunlight with imagination the students from the Ningizimu School for children with mental handicaps have created magic, finding treasure (Umcebo) in the rubbish and debris of daily life.

A Hostile Takeover

In Hostile Takeover, three characters, played by Martin le Maitre, Lindelani Buthelezi, and Mpho Molepo, meet over a freshly dug grave and what ensues is a strange kind of debate about Black Economic Empowerment, the new South African economic policies, religion, morality; “It’s very very contemporary, right on the nub of this weeks ANC stories, and its comic, and strange and perverse and very dark humour”, explains Purkey.

The fabric of life

Women from the Hamburg region of the Eastern Cape have taken the fabric of their daily lives and literally woven a tapestry of hope so rich and so magnificent that it dominates the quiet interior of the Grahamstown Cathedral. The Kesikamma Altarpiece, which is in Grahamstown for the 2005 National Arts Festival, is a product of the Keiskamma Arts Project.

Reading the Signs: A Lifetime of Achievement

In the vastness of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, a story is being written in the wilds. The authors are the animals, the wind, the trees and the myriad of creatures that live in the park. Very few people can read this story and decode the meaning of the smallest, subtlest signs of the wild.One man who could was Karel Kleinmann, popularly known as “Oom Vet Piet”