Carlo Petersen
The Stellenbosch Week of Photography (Swop) opened this week with a host of interesting exhibitions on display.
Photographic presentations included 20 years of Democracy, One Hundred Year Xhosa War of Resistance, One Day Wedding Workshop, IndiAfrica: A Shared Future, Middelmaande Aande, The Dis-eases of Secrecy, Orania, Battle I Done and SITE: Photography and National Trauma.
SITE in particular focuses on using photographs as a tool to indirectly approach past moments of national trauma.
The photographs depict tragic events that happened at Vlakplaas, Marikana, Sharpeville, Boipatong, Bhisho, Soweto, the Anglo-Boer War concentration camps and battlefields, Robben Island and Laingsburg.
Photographer Vincent Bezuidenhout said: “The outcome is perhaps a means to try and engage on a personal level with these moments of national trauma.
“Perhaps as a tool towards a therapeutic remembering, or a means of re-positioning the psyche in view of a traumatic national past.
“Whatever the outcome, it is also a particular engagement with the nature of the photographic medium; a means to work against its sensationalist and voyeuristic nature.
“It engages with the question regarding the effect of sensationalist images of acts of extreme violence and death on the viewer.”
The exhibitions will be on display at various locations in Stellenbosch and end on Sunday.