STREET TRADER PORTRAITS

After the first year of the Studio where students surveyed and observed street life and studied the dynamics of street trading, and as the Studio and its partner the South African National Traders and Retailers Association (SANTRA) decided to focus on this issue and imagine ways of "integrating" formal and informal trading in Yeoville, it became possible to overcome the fear, distrust and prejudice that marks this sector of activity, rendered illegal by the municipality in Yeoville since 1999. NIcolette Pingo, at the time a master student in Development Planning at Wits University, developed a series of photography workshops with interested street traders, supporting traders to use self-photography to inform the public of their daily working routines, their living and working conditions, their sense of the neighborhood. These photographs were complemented by interviews and workshops, consolidated into posters that were presented in Yeoville 2011 exhibition, to trigger public debate about street traders whom many Yeoville residents consider as an integral part of the neighborhood. In addition to these self-portraits, Yeoville Studio commissionned photographer Lerato Maduna to make individual portraits of each of the participants.

A project facilitated by Nicolette Pingo

 Portraits of street traders

Street traders depicting their lives

Photographs by Lerato Maduna