Renowned people in Bloemfontein

Abstract

A photograph is not just as a results of an encounter between an event and a photo9rapher~ picture-taking is an event in itself, and one with ever more peremptory ri9hts to interfere with, to invade, or to ignore whatever is going on. Our very sense of situation is now articulated by the camera's interventions. The omnipresence of cameras persuasively suggests that time consists of interestinq events, events worth photoqraphing." " All photographs are MOMENTO MORI. To take a photoqraph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, and mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photoqraphs testify to time's relentless melt. " This quotation is to be found in Susan Sontag's book SUSAN SONTAG ON PHOTOGRAPHY ; 1977 ; Page 11 and 15. By this, it is evident that since 1977 and lonq before that, photoqraphy, in principle do not chanqe. It is still practicinq the riqht to interfere, whatever is happeninq or whoever had to be photoqraphed.By making a permanent record, photographs allow the viewer to study the detail he would have probably overlooked; as the human eye darts from point to point, nlvlr studyln9 carefully all the aspects of the scenery in detail. Nowhere in the field of photography is there a greater need for perceptive eye and sensitive understanding than in people's photography. posing and lighting the model may be done with exact care; your technical skill with the camera may be fla'-wless and your exposure perfect but unless you have an incisive ability to probe blneath thl surface and delineate the subject's true personality, you will produce nothing more than a competent photograph of a mask. The limit of photographic knowledge of the world is that, while it can, finally, never be ethical or political knowledge. Therefore the knowledge gained through still photographs will always be some kind sentimentalism, whether cynical or humanists. By showing mankind, it reveals man's potential or the image of man contemplating his potential.