Name: Titles
Source: An empty photo album of my mother
Description: I was looking for photos taken in South-Africa, instead I found an empty photo album. The only thing left were the titles of the once carefully placed pictures. A few titles were just names of people I've never met.
Titles:
South-Africa Badplaas 1980
House and garden of Dorie and Bull
Tabacco plantation
Capetown
Train journey of 30 hours
Skyline Twins
Statue of "Liberty"
Dorie
Bull
Goodbye dinner in March
Taking during a train journey
Language monument
Vineyards
View of Capetown
Table mountain
Park in Capetown
"Sofie"
Skipper
Name: "Sofie"
Source: Title within an empty photo album
Description: In the empty photo album I found the title "Sofie". Who was Sofie and why is her name within quotatoin marks? I discovered Sofie was the name of a woman of colour who worked as a maid for my white family in South-Africa. Between a thick stack of photos I only found one picture of Sofie, if this is even her real name.
Name: Absence and presence
Source: Photos of relatives in South-Africa from 1985
Description: I collected photographs of the time my family lived in South-Africa, this was during the Apartheid - a system of racial segregation.
"Both absence and presence have been used as methods of social control; they denote what belongs where and when: what is in place, and what is out of place. Absence demands being made present." (Absence, presence, remembrance - Stephan F. de Beer)
With the attempt to make absence present I cancelled my own family, censoring them by placing coloured circles on top of their faces. An attempt to create space for Sofie.
