not forgetting

MAYBE tomorrow 2009 - new MOPP theme --

CALL FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC SUBMISSIONS


The Camissa Collective is proud to announce the launch of
the 5th edition of the Month Of Peoples' Photography :-


MOPP - 2009 - “MAYBE TOMORROW”


This year’s theme, “Maybe Tomorrow” is expected to bring out peoples responses and personal 'views' of what tomorrow may bring in this time of change we find ourselves in both here in South Africa and around the Globe. Are you Optimistic, skeptical.....even pessimistic about the future ?

Photographers are asked to submit images that best describe their thoughts on the possibilities offered by our future, or on the possible futures available to us, in any way they choose to interpret the theme.


Eligibility : Anyone, anywhere, any vision.
Deadline for entries : 9th April 2009
Each photographer may submit up to 9 images in PRINT format.
Maximum print size 25.4cm x 20.3cm (10”x8”). Smaller prints are acceptable.
Prints to be mounted individually (or as sets) on MATT BLACK mounting boards, with a maximum size of 38cm x 29cm. Smaller mounting boards are acceptable.

So, in simple terms the smallest submission would be one mini-print on a post-card sized mount whilst the biggest would be nine 25.4cm x 20.3cm prints on nine 38cm x 29cm mounts. Obviously, any combinations in between are acceptable.


THIS YEARS' EXHIBITION FORMAT


The Month Of Peoples' Photography : MOPP......is about photography & people – a practical way of connecting & empowering people through the medium of still images.

With this aim in mind and keeping things as fresh as ever, this years' MOPP will be a traveling exhibition based concurrently at four different venues in the Cape Flats for one week in each venue throughout the month of May.

In parallel we will also implement a limited 'cafe-circuit' of exhibits throughout the City.

Finally, on the last night (30th May) we aim to bring both exhibitions together, photographs and people, to share this common bond of photography and our future visions by holding a closing party/exhibition in our Mother City.


THE SMALLER PRINT


• Submissions to be made by post to the following address ;- MOPP, PO Box 876, Cape Town, 8000
Or if REALLY necessary by hand to ;- No 3/5 The Warehouse Studios, 97 Hope Street, Gardens, Cape Town. Please call 076 705 4738 to arrange mutual delivery time.

• Images must include photographers name and image title, to be written on the back of each image.
Any additional information is optional but will be displayed at the discretion of MOPP.

• All entries must be genuine photographic images that are recognizable and not a purely digitally created image.

• Digital retouching is allowed though limited to basic colour correction and cropping.

• If possible submissions should also be accompanied by a set of digital images on CD/DVD (save as high quality JPEG or TIFF, with minimum dimensions of 1800x1200 pixels, and maximum dimensions of 3508x2480 pixels) for use as projected display and web gallery.

• Copyright remains with the creator of the image.

• It is the photographers' responsibility to print and mount their own submissions but please speak to us if you wish to enter but truly cannot afford printing and mounting costs.

• If you wish to have your prints/mounts/CD returned please include a self-addressed stamped envelope.

• Every care will be taken with submissions but neither MOPP, its organisers nor exhibition location staff will accept any responsibility for loss or damage howsoever caused.

• For more information, email us at moppmail@gmail.com and check out the website at www.mopp.org.za.

• We are a voluntary organisation and are constantly on the lookout for help and assistance to bring these exhibitions to life. If you can help us in any way please use the contact details above

WE LOOK FORWARD TO SHARING IN YOUR VISION

ITS OUT ---read below

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The Camissa Collective are proud to announce the launch of the 2009 edition of the Month Of Peoples’ Photography :-

MOPP - 2009 - “MAYBE TOMORROW”

This years theme is expected to bring out peoples responses and personal ‘views’ of what tomorrow may bring in this time of change we find ourselves in both here in South Africa and around the Globe. Are you Optimistic, skeptical…..even pessimistic about the future ?

Photographers are asked to submit images that best describe their thoughts on the possibilities offered by our future, or on the possible futures available to us, in any way they choose to interpret the theme.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Eligibility : Anyone, anywhere, any vision.

Deadline for entries :9th April 2009

Number of enteries : Each photographer may submit up to up to nine(9) images.

Image Format :Maximum print size of 10”x 8”.

THE SMALLER PRINT

· Entries must be made by post to the following address :- MOPP, PO Box 876, Cape Town, 8000

· Or if REALLY necessary by hand to :- No 3/5 The Warehouse Studios, 97 Hope Street, Gardens, Cape Town. Please call 076 705 4738 to arrange mutual delivery time.

· Each image must include photographer’s name and image title. Any additional information with regard to either is optional but will be displayed at the discretion of MOPP .

· No entries via e-mail will be accepted

· Entries must be sent or delivered as prints and be a maximum size of 10” x 8”.

· All entries must be genuine photographic images that are recognizable and not a created image. Digital retouching is allowed though limited to basic colour correction and cropping.

· If possible submissions should also be accompanied by a set of digital images on CD (save as high quality JPEG or TIFF, with minimum dimensions of 1800×1200 pixels, and maximum dimensions of 3508×2480 pixels) for use as projected display and web gallery.Please do not email us with files more than 5MB – rather send a disk.

· Copyright remains with the creator of the image.

· It is the photographers’ responsibility to print and frame their own submission (but speak to us if you wish to enter but truly cannot afford printing). Due to the nature of this year’s event, there are some practical guidelines that we must insist on, such as the overall size of the submission – we’ll discuss the details with you.

· This event is a participation-based voluntary effort, and assistance from entrants in organising and the operational side of things is greatly encouraged. It is also crucial that you get in touch with us for finer details about how MOPP works, and specifically how this year’s event will be structured.

· If you wish to have your prints/CD returned please include a self-addressed stamped envelope.

· Every care will be taken with submissions but neither MOPP, its organisers, nor exhibition location staff will accept any responsibility for loss or damage whatsoever caused.

· For more information, email us at moppmail@gmail.com, and check out the website at www.mopp.org.za.


WE LOOK FORWARD TO

SHARING IN YOUR VISION

In Retrospect - MOPP

The Camissa Collective presents the

Month of Peoples' Photography

The Month of Peoples' Photography is an independent photo exhibition, showcasing a diverse and compelling mix of photographic work from people of all walks of life. It is about photography and people - a practical way of connecting and empowering people through the medium of still images.

MOPP is an annual group exhibition that is presented in a new shape and typically at new locations every year. MOPP highlights under-represented talented photographers while emphasizing the critical role of experimentation and process within conventional and unconventional exhibition spaces. These exhibitions characterize the impermanence and site-specificity of the artworks as well as the adaptive qualities of the participating artists

At the heart of MOPP is the idea of transforming our city into a gallery (without the gallery, of course), allowing everybody the opportunity to exhibit their photographic work in public. We operate on a non-exclusive basis, allowing anyone to take part, asking only for positive contributions of energy and time, so that we gain a large social network to help overcome the challenges of hosting this event.

Our Ethos: “Through the use of creative strategy, collective resources & determination we set out to build an independent movement.”

Photographers who are a part of MOPP share similar values but at the same time vary in their styles and specialties. The photographers must be able to look at the world with a unique eye. This helps to keep everyone's work fresh, while allowing each photographer /creative to make every event or shoot an opportunity to discover new perspectives. We foster independence, while leveraging the power of the group. Individuality is precious, as are varying viewpoints.

MOPP was initiated by the Camissa Collective, a group of independent photographers from Cape Town whose intention was to promote social interaction through photography outside of the bounds of dictated media, and also to create a platform for their and other up-and-coming photographers' work.

MOPP is created and run by an ever-evolving group of young photographers, photo-artists and other creatives. Our group is multi talented and we boast a diverse ethnic background. Many of our members have never exhibited before, and often present a wide range of images. When each of us promotes his or her work, we are promoting each others'.

CAMISSA COLLECTIVE -origins(our pasts inform our futures)

Cape Argus - Will 2010 rob the Quena again?

Will 2010 rob the Quena again?

The first inhabitants of Mouille Point must be acknowledged in plans to build a World Cup stadium at Green Point, writes Cyril Hromnik The World Cup in 2010 poses a great challenge and, at the same time, a great opportunity. The focus is on Green Point, which some see as an ideal place for a new big stadium, while others foresee an ecological, social, economic and even political disaster if the stadium is built on the the present day golf course and the adjacent green area.
Archaeologists have given the green light to the project and nobody has yet considered the historical background and the social and cultural impact the chosen site will have on the inhabitants of this Tavern of the Oceans.

Green Point and the adjacent Roggebaai is where it all began, where the West met the East, where the early Portuguese met the local Quena (Red people, also known as Mixed or Otentottu people; corrupted by the Dutch into "Hottentot") and where the Dutch obtained permission from the Quena to build a small refreshment station for their sailors and traders travelling to the markets of India and of the Orient in general.
Neither the Portuguese nor the Dutch came here with the intention of establishing a colony. All they wanted was fresh water, which they got from the stream called Camissa or Sweet Water, sheep and cattle for slaughter, which the local Quena were happy to sell; and vegetables, which were hard to come by at this wind-swept Cape of Storms, as the Portuguese first came to know it in 1488.
The lack of vegetables was the reason why neither the Portuguese nor the French and English wanted to settle here. The Dutch, who came later, had no choice, because all the more arable places on the coast of Africa had already been taken by the earlier trading nations.
When Jan van Riebeeck's people landed at Camissa Bay (known to European navigators as Table Bay since 1601) on April 6, 1652, the indigenous Quena people received them in good faith, allowed them to land and to collect mail. The Dutch immediately began building a small earthen fort, and employed some of the local Quena "to push the wheelbarrows".
These people introduced themselves to the Hollanders as Otentottu, meaning "mixed" or "related people", and under this, at the time incomprehensible name to the Dutch, they entered the record of the VOC (the Dutch East India Company). They used the name corrupted by the Dutch into the infamous "Hottentot" proudly, knowing that it related them to the peoples of the world.

Those among them who spoke some Portuguese facilitated their communication with other Europeans. Others looked like and were justifiably taken for Indians, for they indeed bore some Indian blood. Up to 1 500 years before Bartolomeu Dias, Dravidian Indian traders and mariners were active on this land, which they named Diab, and in the surrounding ocean which they first named the Ethiopian and later the Indian Ocean.
All along, these Orientals mixed with the local Kung or Bushman people, and through this miscegenation the mixed Otentottu or Quena came into existence. Obviously, their mixing with the mariners and traders of the world went back much further than the 150 years of miscegenation with the Portuguese.
The Camissa Valley (Table Valley) on the shores of the Camissa Bay (Table Bay), which was watered by the Camissa Stream (Rio Doce of the Portuguese; Soeterivier or Sweet River of the Dutch; and modern Platteklip Stream), was inhabited by two distinctive groups of Quena or Otentottu people.
The //Kurin gai-Quena or "Sea-food collecting Quena" lived at //Hû-!Gâis (the "Great Rocks of Storm", now Table Mountain) more or less permanently. They became known to the early Europeans as "Watermen" and to the Dutch as "Strandlopers" or Beachcombers. They owned no cattle except what they had stolen from their cattle-keeping neighbours. Their chief was Autshumao, a Portuguese-speaking man with a touch of Portuguese ancestry, better known by his Indian nickname Harry (from Bengali Hari).
Their hut villages stood in the Camissa Valley and on the flat sea-side ground of what the Portuguese first called the Cabo Tormentoso (the "Cape of Storms") and subsequently the Cabo da Boa Esperança (the "Cape of Good Hope"), now Green Point and Mouille Point.
"The Watermen live permanently in this Table Valley and behind the Lion and the Table Mountain," Jan van Riebeeck wrote in his diary on November 13, 1652.
The second group or tribe of the Quena at //Hû-!Gâis were the Huri-!Xai Quena or "Sea-place Quena" , who became known to the Dutch as Kaapmans (the Cape People). They practised line fishing in the sea, but they also owned some cattle. A shortage of grass for their cattle in dry
season and the "sour" pasture during the cold months forced them to leave the Camissa Valley every year at regular intervals and to search for pasture in the hinterland.
But they saw themselves as "allies" of the shore-based Huri-!Xai Quena and as co-owners of the entire //Hû-!Gâis area. After the winter rains, they always returned to their pastoral and camping ground called Kai Haa Mullai, the "Great Flat Pastoral Land", which the French or others corrupted into the well-known but nonsensical Mouille (meaning "Anchorage" where there is none!).
This ancient Quena name of Dravidian origin survives until now in the present-day anglicised Mouille Point. The Mullai of the Quena was what it says - the flat piece of pastoral land at the western extreme point of the Cape where the Strandlopers and the Kaapmans had their villages, and which is now at the centre of the much-debated Green Point area.
The early maritime visitors to the K'koe Qui //Hû-!Gâis (the Cape of Great Rocks of Storms), be they Indians, Portuguese, English, French or pre-1652 Dutch, did not disturb too much the annual regime of both the //Kurin ai-Quena (Strandlopers) and the Huri-!Xai Quena (Kaapmans). The coming of these foreign traders to the Camissa Bay tended to enrich the material existence of the Quena and to expose them to more advanced food production and a higher lifestyle.
The major - and in certain ways less desirable - change came with the arrival of the permanent Dutch settlers in 1652. From now on, the indigenous Quena had to gradually adjust to the behavioural pattern and to the needs of the newcomers, who intended to stay here permanently.
A huge change (then, unwittingly, of national dimensions and consequences) came to the lives of the Quena at //Hû-!Gâis, almost as great as the changes that are coming with the planned building of the soccer stadium on the former village site of the //Kuri ai and the Huri-!Xai Quena, when the Dutch started ploughing the land near and further away from the Fort.
"Upon further examination," on November 3, 1656, Van Riebeeck hoped that "about 100 morgen of land will be found behind the Lion Hill (that is at Kai Haa Mullai or Mouille Flats of Green Point), rather nearer to the Fort, and easily preserved from the Hottentots."
The Quena did not take it lightly and the chief of the //Kurin gai-Quena, Harry or Autshumao, declared that "the land belonged to his people". Furthermore, as we read in Van Riebeeck's Dispatch of March 5, 1657, "They venture also to assert boldly that it does not please them that we break up the ground, and destroy the grass which grows for the use of their cattle - to grow our crops."
But things were moving forward, the flat camping ground of the Green Point was declared to be "the Commander's arable land" and the Kaapmans and Harry's Strandlopers were allowed to build their huts under Dutch protection on the Kloof Nek, "provided that they grazed their cattle along the coast from the Lion's Head to Hout Bay, as the land of this Table Valley, and the flat behind the Lion Hill (granted to the said Commander by Hon Van Goens) was wanted for the Company's cattle".
This way, the former village grounds of the Quena became the first piece of land in future South Africa to be "legally" transferred, though without the consent of the original owners, to the new Dutch keepers.
The symbolic value of this piece of land, both in the eyes of the former Quena owners and of their modern Quena (now called coloured) descendants is extraordinary, and should be borne in mind when the nature of these grounds, fortunately still green, is to be irreversibly changed. This symbolic value is no doubt many times higher than the value of the soccer stadium proposed to be built there.
Looking at it from an historical perspective, and from the perspective of the self-awareness and self-respect of the current Quena (coloured) people, the right solution would be to keep the Kai Haa Mullai green, and perhaps a symbolic Quena village should be built there.
However, should the history-disregarding impulse to build a stadium there prevail, the stadium should bear the name of the original Quena village, Kai Haa Mullai -- the "Great Flat Pastoral Land".
As time went on, the Kaapmans and the Strandlopers were incorporated into the VOC establishment and many of them mixed with the Europeans, Indians, Malays and even with the black slaves brought to the Cape.
The last thing to consider is what happened when the Quena inhabitants of Kai Haa Mullai and of the Camissa Valley realised that the only home they knew had been irreversibly taken from them. They took their horses, put their wives and possessions on the backs of their humped oxen and drifted into the dry hinterland of the Karoo.Looking back at Kai Haa Mullai and the Camissa Valley from that new perspective, the Quena expressed their deepest feeling about what had happened by calling their former home at the K'koe Qui //Hû-!Gâis (the Cape of Great Rocks of Storms) by the name which says it all •/I-/k??ab, meaning De Facto Theft.
Will history repeat itself and will the Cape of Good Hope become for the second time /I-/k??ab, or De Facto Theft?

Dr Hromnik is a historian and researcher.
Published on the web by Cape Argus on January 21, 2007.
our pasts inform our futures --spread the word

to curate or not to curate ,that is the question ---

Curating change

ANTHEA BUYS - Oct 18 2008 06:00

For the month of October galleries and museums around Cape Town have purged themselves of paintings and display cabinets to make way for the sleek panes of framed photographs. It is the fourth Month of Photography (MoP4), a triennial photography festival steered by the South African Centre for Photography, and everyone who's anyone in the Cape Town gallery scene has jumped on board with related offerings, hoping to catch the overflow from a few central events.

The highlights of MoP4 include a group exhibition at the South African Museum in the Gardens, featuring works by George Hallet, Santu Mofokeng, Tracey Derrick and Sergio Santimano, among others, and the South African National Gallery's much-anticipated retrospective of American photographer Stephen Shore's colour photographs recording American landscapes and urban environments since the 1970s. But the hub of the festival is at the Castle of Good Hope, where three group exhibitions of works by local photographers establish the tone of this year's Month of Photography.

Construct, curated by Heidi Erdman, is a sparse version of her and Jacob Lebeko's travelling exhibition, Construct: Beyond the Documentary Photograph (currently at the Durban Art Gallery), which aims to foreground the constructedness of the photographic image. Then & Now is a survey of work produced by eight prominent photographers before and after South Africa's transition to democracy in 1994. Emergence & Emergency, hailed as the theme exhibition for MoP4, is curated by Jenny Altschuler and gives voice to young artists' diagnoses of the difficulties that accompany transformation at both societal and personal levels.

If the extensive programme of MoP4 had to be whittled down to a core issue it would be the illustration of change, a project taken especially seriously in Then & Now and Emergence & Emergency. Then & Now comprises 20 works each from Paul Weinberg, David Goldblatt, Graeme Williams, George Hallet, Eric Miller, Cedric Nunn and Gisèle Wulfsohn. Half of these were taken before 1994 and half after, and each artist's sets of images are juxtaposed in such a way that they build a recurrent narrative of progress from political angst to banal personal reflection.

Many of the works included in Emergence & Emergency cut straight to the latter, with artists explicitly turning their scrutiny inward into the nature of subjectivity and how this frames the act of photographic looking. Mark Oppenheimer, in a series of photo-collages titled The Process of Unravelling and Reconstructing, cuts and pastes fragments of his subjects' bodies as a metaphor for showing hospitality towards the other. Hasan and Husain Essop, the new it-boys of photographic self-portraiture, clone images of themselves to critique the conflicts faced when the individual is confronted with plural cultural influences.

A number of other works on show address the persistent marginalisation of certain groups of people even after South Africa is ostensibly "new" and transformed: Brett Rubin's The State of Freedom is a series of manipulated studio portraits that condemn the mass media for objectifying foreigners living in South Africa, and Buyaphi Mdledle's documentary photographs of Johannesburg after dark suggest that the contemporary South African city is a transitory, alienating space, particularly for migrant workers.

All of this comes on the back of MoP4's anxiety to transform its own public image. In the past selection processes for the festival's curated exhibitions have been built around what have been perceived by many artists as exclusionary criteria: these have ranged from the artists' participating fee, now optional and pegged at R400, to the whims of an insular selection committee responsible for the show in previous years.

"Because South Africa has a whole history of layers of power, these kind of rules are questioned," Altschuler says, differentiating MoP4 from its precursors. "I'm not boundaried like that. How do you evolve people who are not good enough yet? Not by sending them away until they get better."

Emergence & Emergency comprises work from a handful of artists who were not sent away -- although they might have been had they been dealing with a more particular curator. The trade-off for Altschuler's inclusive priorities is that this sprawling show is not consistently convincing, with certain works reading too bluntly, as though contributions to a catch-all student exhibition.

On the contrary, Weinberg's Then & Now would have done well to include a wider, more demographically representative pool of artists with fewer contributions from each. If MoP4 is anything to go by, it looks as though political rejuvenation and hard curating don't quite go hand in hand.

Spliced
Mark Oppenheimer's project, The Process of Unravelling and Reconstructing, comprises 18 portraits of people from the United States, Russia and Israel. Each was photographed clothed, in underwear and nude, with an object of personal significance. They all answered nine questions about themselves and their views on religion, politics and sexuality. The photographs have been bisected along the waist and combined to form 324 unique images. Oppenheimer says: "The viewer is invited to participate in the process of unravelling and reconstructing by piecing together the fragments of the subjects' bodies and testimonies. In addition to exploring broad philosophical questions the project raises specific issues related to the nature of gender identity and interpersonal relationships."

MoP4 runs at various venues throughout Cape Town. A detailed programme of events can be accessed at the South African Centre for Photography's website: www.photocentre.org.za/festival.htm

Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Web Address: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-10-23-curating-change

AFRIKA BURNS --

sure thing im a bit late with posting this, but now u know AFRIKA BURNS-

MOP4 - Emergence and emergency

he Iliso Labantu Photo Group.

Dear friends

Hope this finds you well. Just wanted to show you more of the work of the Iliso Labantu Photo Group.

Nine of the photographers spent last weekend documenting Better Life, a small township on the Cape Flats where a government and private business alliance has undertaken to build 1500 homes this year. So it was a great place to go and witness change as it happens!

This project is the eighth in our series of Flash Photo Weekends. The work will be taken back to Better Life next weekend for an exhibition on the streets there, as a way of saying thank you to the community for welcoming us in. We will also include many of the images in our forthcoming exhibition entitled 'Structural Necessity' which looks at housing issues in the Cape Town area. This is part of the Cape Town Month of Photography and will run at our studio for the whole of October.

Thanks for your interest in our work and hope to see you soon

Best regards

Alistair

Iliso Labantu
+27 84 393 3283

OCTOBER 2008 MEANS - photo Triennale in cape town

The Cape Town Month of Photography 2008

a triennial festival

Thurs 2 October - Sat. 1 November 2008

Cape Town's ongoing photographic triennial celebrates the photographic image as a unique space where the real and the metaphor engage and stimulate exploration and self expression. It is a festival which provides a rare platform for communication between local photographic communities, inviting inter-regional exchange, circulation and dialogue. It also aims to compete within the global photographic arena and to support the current positioning of South Africa as a world cultural site and hub of photographic vision and practice.

The festival will be presented as a series of exhibitions, events, seminars, workshops and master classes in photography and related themes, the core program running in Cape Town with the possibility of satellite exhibitions and events taking place in other parts of the country. For, although a local event, the month-long festival encourages and welcomes the participation of photographers, galleries, museums and photographic centres elsewhere.

The opening of the principal event in Cape Town will take place at 6pm on Thursday October 2 at the Castle of Good Hope, which will host a number of solo and group exhibitions. Other events and exhibitions will open at a variety of venues on different occasions throughout the month. The festival catalogue will showcase not only the core exhibitions, but also the fringe and satellite items.

MoP4 promotes opportunities for South African photographers to gain both local and global exposure. It will play a pivotal role in giving prominence to photography as a valuable cultural resource promoting cultural tourism. This festival hopes to continue the tradition of presenting an evolving collective vision of our contemporary life, and creating a comprehensive network between diverse photographic communities, including documentary, commercial and fine art practitioners, amateur associations and learners, all of whom are given a forum for expression.

check out this link for more info

photocentre.org.za