By: Keketso Mashigo
Pretoria - Reatile Moalusi is using his camera to raise awareness of road fatalities, taking pictures of roadside memorials at places where victims lost their lives.
The 33-year-old, from Gezina in the city, started the Road Side Memorial project in 2012, taking random photographs of flowers and crosses erected by family members of victims.
Moalusi said he realised the number of roadside memorials was on the rise - an indication that road fatalities were increasing fast.
“I have seen an unprecedented increase in the death rate,” he said. “Every time I visited a place for the second time, I would be appalled to realise that some spaces that were previously vacant were filled with crosses and flowers.”
The increase in the number of road fatalities prompted Moalusi to use his camera to tell stories that would help raise awareness of road safety.
“The increase in road fatalities stirred me into action” he explained, “and then I pursued the roadside memorials project to infuse storytelling in my art and raise awareness on the epidemic of road crashes.”
Bringing back memories
The roadside memorial is a grassroots project, founded from an idea of raising awareness of collisions caused by many factors, including texting while driving, drunk driving and road conditions. It is aimed at combating fatal crashes.
“I shoot the pictures at different times of the day and night, but my best pictures are shot at sunrise using a digital camera,” he said.
Moalusi said some of the pictures were shot in Johannesburg, Limpopo, Pretoria and Mozambique. For his project, he has partnered with the Capital Art Revolution and the City of Tshwane.
“I don’t deal with pictures that include blood, I focus solely on capturing the memory long after the incidents took place.
“For example, I have a picture of someone’s jaw that was missed when cleaning up the crash site.
“Long after the incident I found the broken jaw and took a picture. It brings back memories - that’s what I do.”
The project, which is being exhibited in the Pretoria Art Museum at the Art Flux Gallery, has been running since 4 June and will continue until 3 July.
Pretoria News
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