NATAL AND SAUNDERS STREET PORTRAITS
This street portrait emerged from a Wits photography course for architecture students, facilitated by Solam Mkhabela in 2011, together with Claire Bénit-Gbaffou. Students were asked to chose a lens through which to capture the street : its built and non-built environment as well as the social practices developing in it. They chose four themes, that they named "thresholds", "landmarks", "people-building-plants", and "spaza shops". They organised their vision of the street on photo panels.
Student work on Natal/Saunders Street
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Threshold
Threshold: The outset or point of beginning. The transition between public and private.
Studying a street, the transitional space is obvious. We look at the stories that unfold along this fine line. The line between the projected and the reality – through architecture as well as dress, actions, perceptions. Even the street itself has definite divides. Natal to Saunders, Yeoville to Bellevue to Bellevue East... The differences are startling and the narrative becomes integral. Different worlds in so many senses that overlap and intertwine to help us understand this exciting entropy.
Allister James, Liam Patterson & Kamal Ranchod
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Landmarks
We will be looking at the exterior of houses and flats in Natal/Saunders Street as being recognisable, familiar elements: as land marks – points of reference on the street that one can identify with, and that have significance for the resident.
A dwelling is a place that a person calls home, that they essentially live in. It is the place that they seek privacy in and can feel safe in away from the outside public world. A person sleeps, eats, washes, relaxes, cooks, laughs, decorates, is themselves in their house. Their house is therefore an extension of themselves and their family, and each house is different and has a different character and personality and aesthetic – just like their owners do. People identify their houses with themselves and either choose how they look and appear, or identify a specific appearance with where they live. A house is also an exterior for people, and is what a stranger, or the public sees. A passerby can imagine what a house is like behind the walls by looking at it from the outside. It is interesting to compare and document the differences or similarities of homes in one street. Natal/Saunders Street also has an interesting assortment of types of dwellings and types of people who live there.
The character of a house seen through 4 key elements that in essence makes up a house:
- Door: the entrance to the house, it keeps people out/or lets them in, it is the thing through which the resident transitions from private to public space.
- Window: the visual link between inside-outside and public-private, gives one a ‘glimpse’into the house, is the house’s eye: it lets insiders view outsiders (private view public/street), also lets the street see into the house.
- Fence: the physical barrier between public and private, it protects the house and the people who live in it, it has a texture, a colour, an opacity (solid, semi-translucent, or not really there, low). It has an identity as being a protector, a boundary, a territorial tool.
- Number, name of the building: gives the house a name, creates a personality/ a face for the house, is the most significant identifier for a house.
Ricardo Andrade, Tebogo Letshaba & Pandeani Liphosa
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People, Buildings, Plants
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Spaza shops
We are interested in how spaza shops contribute to street life: convenience, social activity, sense of community, security. We are also questioning through photography and mapping, how they are recognised - architecture, branding, signage, trademarks; and how they are located in the street. We also pay attention to different views - of shop owners and traders, of residents, pedestrians and users.
Dakalo Dyer, Anchi Lu, Andre Nkuna & Lenska Tweedy
Organising the street exhibition
Then, the Studio organised an interactive exhibition in the street, to interact with street residents and users around the pictures.
The organisation itself was telling of the level of distrust existing in this particular section of Yeoville. Building owners were approached to enquire if we could use their locked garage door to hang and exhibit the pictures - they refused, out of fear their building and flats would be spotted and broken into. Yeoville Studio then invested a street corner and brought in its own big boards to hand the panels.
Students-residents engagement around Natal/Saunders street photographs
Students' collective panels were deconstructed, and each picture was standing on its own, posted on boards in the street. Pedestrians, residents, users were invited to select the picture they liked the most, the one they liked the least, and the one they thought captured the best what the street was. Staff and students sollicited individual comments or collective discussions around these choices.
It was interesting to all to grasp the difference between the students' and the residents and users' vision of the street through debate and interaction. Residents and users enjoyed the architecture students' gaze on their environment, spotting a detail or capturing moments that they were not, or no longer, seeing. Students and staff, enthralled by the aesthetic or ironic dimension of a photograph, had sometimes completely missed its social meanings. Discussion mixed a concern for the everyday aesthetics of the street environment and its social realities - where both parties learned, exchanged, and enjoyed.
A project facilitated by Solam Mkhabela and Claire Bénit-Gbaffou
