UK Poverty 2025

Although the UK is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, "current levels of poverty are around 50% higher than in the 1970s" (via). According to the report "UK Poverty 2025", more than 1 in 5 (i.e. 21% or 14.3 million people) were in poverty in 2022/23. A closer look shows that 2 in every 20 adults but 3 in every 10 children lived in poverty. 4 in 10 of those in poverty (6 million people) were in very deep poverty defined by an income far below the poverty line. The poorest families had an average income of 57% below the poverty line. 

Around 3.8 million people (including one million children) experienced destitution, the deepest form of poverty where the most basic needs such as staying warm, dry, clean and fed cannot be met. These disturbing figures have more than doubled between 2017 and 2022. 

There are specific groups that are particularly vulnerable, such as children in general or - even more - larger families with three or more children or children in lone-parent families  (45% of children in large families and 44% of children in lone-parent families were in poverty). Minority ethnic groups are also susceptible to poverty. 56% of people in Bangladeshi and 49% in Pakistani households lived in poverty. The intersection of ethnicity and childhood in numbers means that 67% of children in Bangladeshi and 61% of children in Pakistani households were affected by poverty. 4 in 10 people (40%) in Black British households were in poverty. 

Ethnicity is not the only minoritiy status that is related to poverty. The poverty rate (30%) for disabled people, just to mention one example, was 10 percentage points higher than the rate for people without disabilities. A distinction of disabilities is of interest since it shows that it matters wether one has a limiting mental condition (50% poverty rate) or a physical type (29% poverty rate) of disability (via).

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation points out the importance of tackling poverty stigma in order to fight poverty:

We believe that poverty and poverty stigma are inextricably entangled social problems that reinforce and feed each other. 

We believe that poverty and poverty stigma need to be tackled simultaneously. Anti-poverty work needs to be anti-stigma work at its roots and in every branch of collective action towards ending poverty in the UK. 

We believe that designing stigma out of systems of welfare and support is integral to the fight for economic justice and economic security (Cooke, 2023). 

We believe that stigma is a powerful glue that holds poverty in place, enabling and exacerbating inequalities of wealth, health and opportunity. Loosening the grip of stigma is a key lever of wider progressive social change. 

Effective action on poverty stigma needs to be intersectional, collective and participatory. (via)

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photograph by Rob Brenner (copyright by R. Brenner) via

Because of and inspite of

“When people like me, they like me "in spite of my color." When they dislike me; they point out that it isn't because of my color. Either way, I am locked in to the infernal circle.”
Frantz Fanon

photograph by John H. White via

Associations with African American Vernacular English

Abstract: The current study examines the effect of dialect for a Black speaker, paying particular attention to the implications for criminal justice processing. Participants in this study heard an audio clip of a Black man describing his weekend and were randomly assigned to hear the account spoken in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or Mainstream American English (MAE). For half of each sample, the audio clip was described as an alibi. Participants then evaluated the speaker across dimensions related to character and criminality, as well as his race (sic), education, and socio-economic status. 

Results indicate that the speaker was viewed as having worse character and a greater criminal propensity if he spoke using the AAVE guise rather than the MAE guise. Additionally, participants perceived the AAVE speaker to be more stereotypically Black, less educated, and lower socio-economic status. These findings raise questions about contemporary forms of bias in criminal justice processing. (Dunbar, King & Vaughn, 2024)

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- Dunbar, King & Vaughn (2024). Dialect on Trial: An Experimental Examination of Raciolinguistic Ideologies and Character Judgments. Sage Journals, link

- photograph by John H. White via

Escaramuza. By Constance Jaeggi.

"Historically Charrería, which is the national sport of Mexico, was predominantly male. Charrería emerged from early Mexican cattle ranching activities and was eventually refined and formalized during the post-revolutionary era as a romantic, nationalist expression of ‘lo mexicano’ (Mexicanness). It is similar in many ways to American rodeo in its variety of competitive equestrian activities. Women, however, were not seen participating on horseback until the 1950s when they were finally brought into the sport as riders.

A discipline was invented for female participants called ‘Escaramuza,’ consisting of all-female precision horse riding teams who execute exacting maneuvers while riding sidesaddle at high speed and wearing traditional Mexican attire. The costumes and synchronized patterns they perform were inspired by the Soldadera or Adelita, the women who fought in the Mexican Revolution between 1910-1920. To this day, the events within Charrería remain heavily gender segregated. A charreada lasts up to three hours but the portion dedicated to Escaramuza makes up for three to five minutes of those three hours, so there is still a large discrepancy between the representation of genders within the sport.

Escaramuza is wide-spread in Mexico of course, and becoming increasingly established in the United States as Charrería keeps growing. Initially, I was drawn to the visuals. The dresses are colorful and intricate, and the performance is elegant and powerful, like a ballet on horseback. But it is the stories of the women I met that really captivated me. The dedication that they have for the sport and their drive to uphold this tradition is admirable. In Mexico, Charrería tends to be a sport practiced by the wealthy, while many of the charros and charras in the US work hard to be able to afford the costs associated with owning and competing with horses. A lot of the women I met are full time students, or have full time jobs, sometimes multiple jobs and are raising children.

The sport is also dangerous. The women ride side saddle in heavy, hand-crafted dresses. A team consists of eight riders, and they perform patterns, criss-crossing each other at high speed. Riding side-saddle is extremely difficult as you only have good control over one side of the horse. There is a narrative around immigration and the role it plays in the development of the sport in the US, shaped by this feeling that many of the riders expressed to me of “not feeling Mexican enough when traveling to Mexico, but not feeling American enough at home either.” 

Then there are the gender relations. Many riders expressed frustration regarding their inability to vote within the Charrería governing association, and the strictness of the dress rules they are subjected to, which is not the case for the disciplines practiced by the men. And finally, the parallels with the women who fought in the Mexican Revolution, the lack of historical research on their role, how they were remembered through time. Essentially, it felt like such a richly layered story, there was so much unpacking to do that I couldn’t look away. 

The women I photographed are from all around the US. They are for the most part first, second, third, fourth and fifth generation Americans. As I got to know these women personally, I became aware of the importance of their oral histories. I needed to bring their voices back into the work somehow. I started interviewing teams as I went. I met teams from California, Texas, Washington, Illinois, Iowa and Colorado, recording their stories as I photographed them. I tried to understand how they thought of their position in Charrería, what Escaramuza meant to them and how they wanted to be seen, which influenced the way I photographed them. I am continuing the project as I expand the body of work for an upcoming book, and attempting to cover as many of the US states as possible. 

Escaramuza translates to ‘skirmish’ in English, inspired by the image of the soldaderas sent into battle before the men to kick up dust and distract the opposing side. Women of course played a much more significant role than simple distraction during this complex and destructive civil war. They were activists in feminist movements, but a much larger number of women of rural and lower urban classes found themselves caught up in the struggle and had no choice but to be actively involved, whether it was as camp followers and caretakers for the soldiers, or as women who took up arms. 

I see parallels between the soldaderas’ contribution to the advancement of women’s emancipation in Mexico and the Escaramuzas I met who are pushing back on the machismo in their sport. Especially for the US-based Escaramuzas growing up in blended cultures. The image of the soldadera is a powerful historical example and reference point. It means that Escaramuza is much more than a way to connect with contemporary Mexican traditions. It also connects these women to their history, the history of their people and of women in their culture. It gives women a certain image of strength to refer to.  

One of the riders told me that she wanted to inspire other young women by showing them that they too could ride horses, be fierce and competitive and that they too could have a place in Charreria. Soldaderas provide evidence of women defying social expectations, and that has an impact. 

(...) Escaramuza is an example of cultural preservation in an era where globalization often dilutes local traditions; a way of keeping customs and stories of past generations alive by passing down skills and technique from one generation to the next. It is a celebration of heritage. It is also a source of personal empowerment for many of the women involved, providing a strong sense of identity and pride and challenging traditional gender roles by showcasing women as skilled equestrians and leaders in their communities. This empowerment is not only personal but also communal, as it helps redefine gender norms within a cultural context."

Constance Jaeggi

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photographs by Constance Jaeggi via and via and via 

The Holy Week Uprising

After Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in April 1968, riots erupted in nearly 200 US-American cities. During the days that followed his death, the U.S. experienced the greatest wave of social unrest after the Civil War (via). These riots were a direct reaction to King's assassination. His assassination is, however, not seen as "the" reason. Tensions had already been high before King's death. Segregation was officially over but still part of everyday life. Being Black meant discriminatory housing policies, income dispartities, poverty, and lacking job opportunities. Due to these conditions, Black US-Americans often had to move to (Black) low-income areas which were not only poorly maintained but also meant being hassled by local police (via)

(Above: "A crowd described as "militant, dancing and chanting" takes part in a memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. in Garfield Park on April 7, 1968. This photo was published in the April 8, 1968, Milwaukee Sentinel. The banner depicts black activist H. Rap Brown, who famously said the previous summer, "Violence is as American as apple pie.") 

58,000 National Guardsmen and Army troops assisted law enforcement officers in handling the violence. 43 people were killed, around 3,500 were injured, 27,000 were arrested and 54 of the cities affected saw more than 100,000 dollars property damage, Washington D.C. experienced the most property damage. There, twelve days of unrest meant 1,200 fires and 24 million in insured property damage (174 million dollars in today's currency). It took decades for some neighbourhoods to fully recover. The fires had destroyed buildings, made thousands of people homeless and jobless, too many had died in burning buildings. In Baltimore, which came second to Washington in terms of damage, crowds first gathered peacefully to hold a memorial service. After a couple of small incidents, 6,000 National Guards arrived and protests erupted (via).

“If I were a kid in Harlem, I know what I’d be thinking right now. I’d be thinking that the whites have declared open season on my people, and they’re going to pick us off one by one unless I get a gun and pick them off first.”
President Johnson

"America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. (A riot) is the language of the unheard."
Martin Luther King

"For years, many white Americans mistakenly conceived of racism as a “Southern problem” and believed that Jim Crow only resided south of the Mason-Dixon Line. The racial violence of the 1960s throughout the country rudely awakened the nation to the speciousness of this belief. 

Yet no sooner had that belief been discarded than it was immediately replaced with a new and equally false one: that America’s race problems extended only to our large cities and their inner-city ghettos, but not beyond that. The terms that we used — and still use — contributed to the misunderstanding of what was taking place. By using the term “riots,” we reinforce the notion that these acts of “collective violence” were spontaneous and apolitical and that they were disconnected to the protests for civil rights in the South. But a closer examination of them, individually and collectively, proves otherwise. 

This flawed understanding had real consequences. Focused on large cities, the national media gave sparse coverage to the revolts in York and other midsize and small cities, despite the fact that the majority of them occurred in such places. In 1969 alone, revolts rocked midsized cities like Hartford, Conn., Harrisburg, Pa. and Fort Lauderdale, Fla."
Levy, Washington Post

photographs via and via and via and via and via and via 

Distraction

“The very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.”

Toni Morrison

photograph of Toni Morrison by Jill Krementz (1974) via

Flowers at Your Feet. Texas Isaiah's Archive.

Texas Isaiah is a Black transmasculine photographer and the first trans photographer to shoot for the cover of Vogue and Time. His project "Flowers at Your Feet" started in 2020 and is about memories, gratitude, beauty, and healing;. It is a collection of Black transmasculine portraits, the flowers are the people themselves (via).

Excerpts from an interview:

I was interested in developing a more concrete archive because I had lost a significant amount of people in an eight-month period. People from childhood had passed away, my coworker, and the last person was my grandfather.

Looking back, I didn’t have a visual archive of these people. I just had my memories, and there was a visual loss that resonated with me deeply. I started to think more about what it would look like to contribute to an everlasting archive. Black and brown POC trans people weren’t being imaged a lot during that time, so I thought about the ways I can do that differently that weren’t immediately tethered to media or traditional aspects of representation.

When I was creating the archive, which was Black trans people in general, I didn’t feel a full connection with a lot of the [other trans-centered] work that was being created, especially of just masculine people in general. There are so many reasons why there isn’t a lot more Black trans representation in the media. It was not so much that I wanted to be seen, actually. I wanted to be able to extend space to people who felt invisible, who felt that they didn’t deserve to be imaged. When we look at media, the transmasculine people that are popular and who are extended resources are white transmasculine people.

It’s so important for people to see themselves so that they are able to heal and grow from the things they’ve been taught. There is so much that is projected onto us, and the reality is that we haven’t always been in proximity to the most healthy terrains of masculinity. But I believe that Black transmasculine people — in the ways that we have cared and loved throughout history and today — are really shifting the perspective of what it looks like to be a person of good character who is also masculine.

The beautiful thing about Flowers at Your Feet is that it mostly highlights transmasculine people, which includes trans men. I think that there is so much nuance there because not everybody has the same relationship to their masculinity — not everybody identifies as a man.

And I’ve learned myself that other people desire specificity. I don’t need that for myself because I don’t think that there is always language to describe our existences, and I’ve made peace with that. Those gray areas are really beautiful to me, because that means that I don’t have to lock myself into something that I may grow out of. There’s such a deep desire to keep that open.

Inherently, I view transness as, like, such a deeply spiritual space. I believe that, you know, the spirit doesn’t have to have any specificity. I think that’s such a beautiful thing.

It (Flowers at Your Feet) was something that someone I dated a long time ago used to say to me. I asked them, “What does that mean?’ They said, you know, ‘I’m just giving you your flowers. I’m offering you gratitude.’” And when I was thinking about a Black transmasculine archive, and also the masculine archives that exist today, it was during that era where people were creating a lot of images of Black masculine people and flowers.

That was so beautiful aesthetically, but I don’t think that conversation went as far as it could have. I think it stopped at aesthetics. I decided to use that title for the project to offer my gratitude to Black transmasculine people — past, present, and future — but also to contend with the images made at that time. There aren’t any flowers within the images I make; the flowers are the Black transmasculine people themselves.

Texas Isaiah

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photographs by'Texas Isaiah via and via and via

Beautiful Disruption. Nadine Ijewere's Photography.

Nadine Ijewere is a London-born photographer with a Nigerian-Jamaican background. With her approach, she aims to help establish "a new standard of beauty" (via). For her commissions, she usually does most of the casting herself choosing models who (apart from age) do not conform to the traditional industry standards and who are ethnically underrepresented (via). In 2019, she became the first Black woman to shoot a cover for Vogue (via).

My work is all about the celebration of diversity without creating a representation – particularly for women, as we are the ones who are more exposed to beauty ideals and to not being comfortable in who we are.

Nadine Ijewere

I find beauty in all its facets. My work is about showcasing different forms of beauty that I believe our society could do a better job of representing. We are so different, and I think it is especially important to show this in the world of fashion. I follow this principle when I cast models and also by exploring my own origins and identity.

Nadine Ijewere

Excerpts from an interview:

Looking at these images, I wish that I saw these kinds of images and people that looked like me when I was growing up. It’s such an important thing and it’s exciting that there are more Black creatives now using their culture and heritage to create amazing images that can be used for research or reference because it wasn’t necessarily available for me. Even now, it’s in a questionable quantity and finding images for inspiration is quite difficult, but it’s nice that the images we create can inspire the next generation. 

Positivity is important because for so long there have been negative connotations around the Black community and Black women and it’s something that we don’t really see celebrated or portrayed in a beautiful way. In the past, when you did see women of colour, there was always an element in place to make them conform to what the beauty ideal was – whether it’s straightening their hair or lightening their skin. It’s important for me to reframe that and show women of colour in a positive light, that’s what my work is all about.

I would have been a lot less self-conscious because growing up, I was always the sort of person who tried to fit in and change something about me. My hair was a big issue because I grew up in an environment that was predominantly white and went to a school that was the same so I was always trying to assimilate to fit in. 

I would straighten my hair a lot and would wear weaves and extensions instead of my natural hair because in fashion and beauty you never really saw girls with tight curls or Afro-type hair being portrayed as beautiful. If you did, it would be the images in Black hair salons of girls on relaxer kits with silky, straight hair. It was the image that was constantly shoved in your face, so of course you felt insecure because that’s not the hair you had. Even protective styles which are natural like cornrows and braids were seen as not beautiful or unprofessional. 

You become very restricted in a sense and you lose your sense of identity because you’re trying to fit in and be somebody else. I struggled with that for years, but having images like the images I see now would be incredible because it shows beauty as being multifaceted, there’s different kinds of elements and layers to it. It shows it in a different way and celebrates it across the board and that’s super exciting.

Nadine Ijewere

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photographs by Nadine Ijewere via and via and via and via

Bringing The Struggle Into Focus. By Peter McKenzie.

"We are people before we're photographers."

Duane Michael

"I am part of all that I have touched and that has touched me."

Thomas Wolfe

This is the basic promise that this paper will follow. I believe that if we are going to become part of the struggle through photographic communication we must examine and realise the undeniable responsibility of all photographers in South Africa to using the medium to establish a democratic Azania. Our photographic seeing is the direct result of the factors that contribute to our being here. Our day to day experiences and our degree of sensitivity to these will determine the are we isolate in our viewfinder, the moment in time that we freeze forever.

Photographic Communication and Culture

"Your child shares in your sense of indignity when you are stopped outside your yard and asked to produce your reference book. Your child shares in your sense of outrage and anger when people arrive in your house in the midle of th (sic) night and take you away, throw you into jail without trial, and for weeks, evven months, refuse your wife the right to see you.

As their cars drive off into the night with you, they leave behind seeds of hatred in the hearts of your small kids."

Percy Qoboza

This "way of seeing" referred to in the introduction, holds true for the viewer too. We therefore realize the importance of examining this relationship with our viewers so that they can understand, interpret and perceive the images that we transmit to them in the process of communication. Culture supplies this relationship. To demonstrate this we can compare photographic comunication to an iceberg where the tip of the iceberg represents the point and the submerge area the unstated unconscous cultural assumptions that make communications possible. Communication depends on the assumption that photographer and viewer share a common culture. 

Photographic communication is possible in our multicultural society because we are united under oppression. The chances of being morally affected by photographs is better than ever before in our struggle because of the level of consciousness and awareness of the people. Evidences of the last drawing together of the laager are so evident tha tthose who don't see them are those who choose to ignore them!

Because of the high level of awareness and frequent acts of resistance in this country we will regard our culture at this stage in our struggle as a resistance culture. (...)

The poor history of committed photography in South Africa will reflect the refusal of most photographers to accept their responsibility to participate in the struggle.

"Whether he likes it or not the photographer is in the business of communication and it is useless to retreat into the romanticism of self-expression and technology wizardy. Useless, because to communicate takes us purely beyond personal and technical concerns and into phenomena that the communicator and his audiences share."

Frank Webster

This shows the added responsibility of photographers in South Africa as oppression continually stifles the inherent creativity in us. No photographer can lay claim to any individual artistic merit in an oppressed society.

We must realize at this urgent stage of our struggle the importance of making a commitment to change through photographic communication. 

Once we realize the importance of our resistance culture in photographic communication it becomes clear that we can successfully communicate on a level that the people are perceptive to. 

(...)

Effects of uniqueness on photographic communication

Once we've understood the present feelings and sensitivities of our intended viewers we can become explicit and direct in our photographhic communication and the statements we make will be easily understood.

Lewis hine, a pioneer in social documentation, said: "There are two things I wanted to do with the camera, I wanted to show the things that had to be corrected, I wanted to show the things that had to be appreciated." Social documentation can be regarded as having two aspects, negative aspects which we can call negative documentation and positive aspects or positive documentation. 

Negative documentation

This type of documentation is to show the effects of injustice. They show the shocking conditions that people are forced to cope with, they show the faces of those who have given up in the face of overwhelming odds. These images are meant to awaken the sleeping consciences of those who havent't yet realized their oppression and the danger of non-commitment to change. There are those of our brothers who are so blinded by crumbs from the master's table, who even develop a sense of pride over their false securities. Because of the realistic tangibility of photographs they can arrest the conscienne of those people and influence them into remedial action.

Positive documentation

We can see the danger of negative documentation. We could be seen as a pathetic and hopeless people. Nothing could be more misleading, our struggle has shown resolution, dignity and strength. We've got to show the hope and determination of all committed to freeom. 

The photographer must serve the needs of the struggle. He must share the day eperiences of the people in order to communicate truthfully. We must be invovled in the strikes, riots, boycotts, festivities, church activities and occurrences that affect our day to day living. We must identify with our subjects in order for our viewers to identify with them. Because of the realistice nature of photographs and the relationships built up around the camer and its images they can promote unity, increase awareness and inform. A society possessing these qualities is an easily mobilized one. We as photographers must also be questioning, socially consious and more aware than our predecessors. 

(...)

Two intentions are necessary for committed photography in South Africa:

1. We must be comitted to liberation.

2. We must prepare our people for a democratic Azania. 

Peter McKenzie, Botswana Cultural Festival, Gaborone, 1982

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photograph by Ernest Cole via

The Afrapix Collective

Afrapix was founded in South Africa in 1982 (and disbanded in 1991), a collective of photographers who documented and opposed Apartheid. According to Paul Weinberg, a cofounder, initially, there were two objectives: to found a cooperative not unlike Magnum Photos but also - or primarily - to stimulate social documentary photography and social change.

(...) the Afrapix photographers’ mandate was to be participants in action, aligned with the politics and principles of the anti-apartheid movement. Their work was grounded in the belief that exposure and visibility were not the end goal; rather, the objective was ‘preconditions for an empathetic and humanistic reaction that would prompt international political action.’ (via)

The more influential Afrapix became, the more challenges the photographers had to face. Apartheid security forces harrassed the photographers, their office was raided, then the building (which also housed other anti-apartheid groups) was bombed. There were police surveillance, spies, and direct threats. Laws became more restrictive, designed to fight "the public relations nightmare the apartheid government was experiencing overseas, namely, images of white police officers brutalising unarmed black civilians". The mainstream press avoided running stories that seemed to be opposing the government policy and censored itself to survive since their revenue came from the white readership that was already complaining about boring and annoying headlines "about the experiences of Black South Africans". These experiences were not appealing to advertisers, either (via).

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photograph (COSATU Cultural Day 1987, (c) Anna Zieminski) via

Trabold, Bryan. 2018. Rhetorics of Resistance: Opposition Journalism in Apartheid South Africa. 23. University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh.

Trabold, Bryan. 2018. Rhetorics of Resistance: Opposition Journalism in Apartheid South Africa. 43. University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh.

Trabold, Bryan. 2018. Rhetorics of Resistance: Opposition Journalism in Apartheid South Africa. 43. University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh.

Tyler Mitchell's Sense of His Own Historical Moment

Tyler Mitchell's photographs are "a counterpart to the pernicious stereotypes that have long dominated visual culture" by showing Black people in different ways they might "look, dress and act", for instance, enjoying leisure time. Probably due to their soft light, pastel colours, and settings, Mitchell's photographs do not look politicial at first glance (via).

Mitchell was born in Atlanta in 1995. Skateboarding led him to photography, he then studied film and television at New York University and, in 2015, self-published a book about skaters in Havana. Three years later, aged 23, he was commissioned to photograph Beyonce for a Vogue issue. He became the first Black photographer to shoot the cover of Vogue (via).

This idea of my community and my friends, young black men and women, being able to enjoy pleasure, or leisure time — that’s revolutionary. I think about the pleasures and the freedoms we’ve been denied historically — or the way that free time and leisure time, for us, have been framed as something potentially violent.
Tyler Mitchell

Mitchell seems to have "a clear sense of his own historical moment". He believes that being a Black photographer carries a different weight since just a short while ago Black people could not afford cameras (via).

I’m indulging myself in the way that making pictures for me is a form of protection. I’m able to create and live out these little moments or small figments of dreams in which Black people exist within the space of a frame where they are unencumbered. They’re not having to be hypervigilant about social and political dangers, the hypothetical threat of a white gallery space, or any of these things that remind them to get out and stay out.
Tyler Mitchell 

Mitchell's work was partly inspired by Tumblr where he noticed that most of the images of free and sensual young people showed whites. He uses the documentary approach to capture Black identity "in an equally close and vulnerable light" (via).

People like Ryan McGinley and Larry Clark were just two examples of images that seem to proliferate the most on those types of platforms. They seem to get the most re-blogs or people would always repost them. Their most iconic images would usually be white youths, very sensuous and beautiful, enjoying life in groups in Paris or on road trips, you know So I’m thinking about my experiences and trying to make art about my experiences in the South. Being black and middle class, I think about the self-policing that has to happen within our community here. It’s baked into our psyche that we’re maybe not allowed to, or that we’re not supposed to, behave in those ways outwardly in society or perform those sentiments of joy… Obviously, we do enjoy leisure time, that’s a global thing. But my work is about bringing forward these ideas of leisure and play as radical things, because we’ve societally, politically, and within ourselves—in our psyche—been prevented from enjoying those freedoms. Utopia, by definition, isn’t achievable. Photography, by definition, is about constructing an image and framing an image and a point of view on the world. I’m playing with these ideas, the fantasy of things that are not real, or that I would want to be real.
Tyler Mitchell

I think the images suggest [a] core fundamental resilience, radiance and full human agency that Black folks command, even in environments that tell them otherwise.
Tyler Mitchell 

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photographs by Tyler Mitchell via and via and via and via and via and via

"In the midst of a moment of freedom, you’re forced to face yourself.’ A Glint of Possibility, Tyler Mitchell, 2022

"The American south is a verdant place, full of beautiful and seductive environments, but it’s also threatening, when you think about its racial and political history. Atlanta, where I was born and raised, is one of the greenest cities in the US, basically a city in a forest. I am an only child and had a lot of free time to meditate in these lush spaces. Raised in the suburbs, I went to school in a predominantly white area, which forced me to think about my own Blackness and my relationship to the world around me.

I’ve been making photographs since I was a teenager, primarily oriented around young Black life. My shots are theatrical, staged images, often exploring the psychological relationship young, Black, creative people have with outdoor spaces, specifically in the south.

For this shot, which I called A Glint of Possibility, I thought about a boy on a tyre swing and all the connotations that has, like freeform and “hang time”. The artist and cinematographer Arthur Jafa talks about this in a very different sense. There’s an image that appears in a lot of his exhibitions: I believe it’s a member of the band Bad Brains jumping into the crowd. He has these theories about how Black people hang and jump through space in style, in a beautiful way. So I thought about a boy hanging off a tyre swing, a symbol of fun, leisure, relaxation, all that good stuff. But he’s almost looking at his reflection in the lake in a potentially scary way. Like when you see yourself in a mirror and you’re startled – in a moment of freedom, you’re forced to face yourself.

I chose the title because a glint refers to a refraction of light, a refraction of oneself, and then there’s possibility – all of the moments before and after this moment. A possibility in a boy’s life, to set oneself free, to fly, or to hang there freely – all of those things come to mind with this picture. (...)"

Tyler Mitchell

Above: Treading, 2022

“I kept coming back to the power of water. As Black folks, we constantly have this relationship to water that can be spiritually beautiful and restorative while also carrying the connotations of struggle in how we passed through the transatlantic slave trade. I was struck by the beauty of swimming through mud. It’s a struggle and eerie, but it also has so much radiance and beauty. I’m interested in these allusions of freedom and transcendence.”
Tyler Mitchell

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photographs by Tyler Mitchell via and via

Borrowed Time. Photographs by Dennis Darling.

In 2012, Dennis Darling started photographing the ageing population of Holocaust survivors of Terezin, once a holiday resort for the nobility, then turned into a ghetto, then concentration camp. Officially, Terezin had not been an extermination camp. However, about 33,000 people died there due to malnutrition, disease and other reasons. From there, about 88,000 were deported to Auschwitz and other extermination camps. 

Above: Andula Lorencova née Weinsteinova, b. 1927, Prague, 2012

When the war ended, there were only 17,247 survivors. Dennis Darling made more than 150 portraits of survivors in seven countries. Many of the survivors are photographed within personal spaces (via).

In late 1943 an inspection of Terezin was demanded by Christian X, king of Denmark, to determine the condition of 466 Danish Jews sent there in October of that year. The review panel was to include two Swiss delegates from the International Red Cross and two representatives of the government of Denmark. The Nazis permitted these representatives to visit Terezin in order to dispel rumors about the extermination camps.

The Germans immediately engaged in an infamous beautification program – “Operation Embellishment,” a ruse intended to mollify the king’s concerns. Weeks of preparation preceded the visit. The area was cleaned up, and the Nazis deported many Jews to Auschwitz to minimize the appearance of overcrowding in Terezin. Also deported in these actions were most of the Czechoslovak workers assigned to "Operation Embellishment". The Nazis directed the building of fake shops and cafés to imply that the Jews lived in relative comfort.

 

The inspection was held on June 23, 1944 (...).

The Danish Jews whom the Red Cross visited lived in freshly painted rooms, not more than three in a room. (...)

As part of the charade the Nazis compelled Schächter to give a performance of the Requiem. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Red Cross issued “a bland report about the visit, indicating that the representatives were taken in by the elaborate fiction.” Eichmann was later quoted as having said, “Those crazy Jews—singing their own requiem.” Rafael Schächter was deported to Auschwitz on October 16, 1944, and died the following day in the gas chamber.

Following the successful use of Terezin as a supposed model internment camp during the Red Cross visit, the Nazis decided to make a propaganda film there. It was directed by Jewish prisoner Kurt Gerron, an experienced director and actor. Shooting took eleven days, starting September 1, 1944. After the film was completed, most of the cast and the director were deported to Auschwitz. Gerron was murdered by gas chamber on October 28, 1944. (via)

Above: Otto Greenfield, North Yorkshire, England

Above:Raja Zadnikova, Prague

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photographs by Dennis Darling via and via and via

Santu Mofokeng: Testing How Many Eccentricities a Picture Can Tolerate before it Breaks apart

Santu Mofokeng (1956-2020) was a South African photographer and member of the Afrapix collective. He started working under the sign of David Goldblatt, his teacher, but showed a different approach. While Goldblatt's photographs were rather careful, precise, "pointed and outwardly political", Mofokeng's work was marked by feelings of alienation testing "how many eccentricities a picture can tolerate before it breaks apart". Mofokeng, according to an article, "portrayed the feelings of black South Africans, and in doing so examined their country's collective subconscious" (via).

photograph (16 June Commemoration, Regina Mundi, Soweto, 1986) by Santu Mofokeng via

Mapping an Emotional Landscape: Urban Anxiety in Johannesburg

The following excerpts are taken from an interview - on urban life in Johannesburg, anxieties, how apartheid shaped the city and on marginalised groups - with Cobus van Staden (CVS) and Nicky Falkof (NF), both based in Johannesburg.

NF: Why anxiety? Well, you can't analyze a political system without considering people's emotions to some extent. What are people afraid of? What do they desire? What identities are they imposing on themselves and on others? Who do they want to be close to? Who do they want to be far from? Emotion structures how we shop, which structures our economies. It underpins the physical ways in which cities are built. But we don't often think about Global South cities in these terms. We don't often grant people the agency and the inner life that we grant people in the Global North. 

If you consider media, cultural production, and literature, you might think about the kind of films that are made about a city like New York, where you have your deep, internal, canonical pieces of text that are all about how someone feels. And then you think of a city like Joburg, where you have films about Apartheid, films about post-Apartheid, films about violence, but never anything about people’s inner lives.

CVS: This is one of the reasons why we focus on anxiety rather than on fear, because anxiety is free-floating. We quote a prominent South African psychologist who calls anxiety "objectless." So you can be anxious about a particular issue, but you can also be anxious, very anxious, about not something specific at all—just a lot of different things—and some are defined and some are not. It is this anxious hum that underlies the experience of living in Joburg.
Because South Africa underwent apartheid, and Johannesburg was built according to apartheid ideas, there are buffer zones, highways, and empty stretches keeping people apart. The history of the city is written on its landscape. But the emotions that result from that history are not as well mapped. Mapping an emotional landscape ended up being our contribution to previous physical mappings done in Joburg.

CVS: Crime is a major reality in Johannesburg. It is a major structuring principle in how the city is built, how people build their houses, how they act in public. But the fear of crime is almost something different than the actual crime problem. When looking at crime statistics in South Africa, one realizes that poor people suffer disproportionately from crime. Crime for poor people is a daily, lived, physical experience. Whereas for more affluent people, the discourse around crime is huge, but they don't have as much of a daily experience of crime.

NF: From an intersectional perspective, crime is a huge issue in terms of gender. South African rates of gender-based violence (GBV) are off the scale. There are horrific stories weekly of women murdered, both by intimate partners and strangers. 

In the book, there are stories written by a young Black woman who traverses Johannesburg in highly precarious ways using public, mini bus taxis. These are dangerous, and young women are often seen as fair game by the drivers and to other men. Crime is, particularly for women, one of the most significant features of life in Johannesburg, because you are constantly hypervigilant. For working-class women much more so than middle-class women, and for women who take public transport much more so than for women who have private transport.

NF: For women, physically being on the streets feels quite dangerous. In Johannesburg, you hear stories of women sexually harassed or even assaulted at taxi ranks or other public spaces, and often it's “because their skirts are too short.”
It’s not just a case of women being easier targets, so it's easier to steal their handbags, or of stereotypes of ravaging sexuality. It's about discipline. There's something in the way that gendered crime manifests in the streets of Johannesburg that is about telling women where they belong and where they don't belong.
Some argue that part of this has to do with the disenfranchisement of a generation of South Africans who were left out of the supposed promises of apartheid when South Africa turned into a neoliberal state. Who do you take your frustration out on? Who's always at the bottom of the pack? It's Black women. I do think that is an oversimplification, but there is something significant in the way in which Black women are consistently disciplined.
We have a huge homelessness problem in the city, and there's a lot of begging. But the majority of these people are men. Where are all the destitute women? Why are they not on the streets? How are they surviving? A lot of women, particularly migrants, end up in very low-level, extremely low-paying prostitution jobs because they're not permitted to survive in other sectors of the city.

CVS: With regard to the LGBTQ community, many transgender migrants come to South Africa because it has constitutional protection for sexual minorities, which other African countries do not. In some ways, South Africa is a kind of promised land for LGTBQ people on the continent. And when one goes to Johannesburg Pride, in particular to Soweto Pride, you really feel that. You can really feel people who come from everywhere, from all of these rural places, and a lot of other countries, to make it to Joburg and you really do feel giddiness in terms of self-expression.
But of course, self-expression also makes one visible in public space, so it becomes a difficult trade-off. For trans people, many of them try and get to Cape Town, because Cape Town has an image of being more LGBTQ-friendly than Johannesburg. But frequently, these migrants end up falling victim to attempts by the South African state to stop migrants from coming to South Africa. The government can't legally stop people from applying for asylum, but it makes the asylum process as difficult as possible, including by forcing LGBTQ migrants already in Joburg to stay in the city.

NF: In South Africa, race talk and crime talk intersect, but race talk is also often quite overt. People are capable sometimes of speaking about race in quite straightforward ways because it is difficult to hide from it. Sara Ahmed makes this point when she talks about the way that scholars in the North write about the “invisibility” of whiteness. She argues, "Well, it might be invisible for you guys, but it's not invisible for us. Because we live with it every day." And because of the racial demographics in this country, it is a lot harder for white people to casually pretend that we’re benign.
In South Africa, the white middle class, although they do use crime as the placeholder for race, are potentially more cognizant of racial issues. That does leave some space for social change because people may be able to acknowledge the inherently racialized nature of their fears, which does not seem to be the case in the United States.

::: full interview: LINK

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photograph (taken in South Africa) by Paul Weinberg via

Township Billboards. By Santu Mofokeng.

"(I should preface by saying the work in this show is seminal. It is the beginning of my investigation of the visual history of township billboards.) 

Perhaps the title should read Township and Billboard. Billboards have been the medium of communication between the rulers and the denizens of townships since the beginning of the township. The billboard is a fact and feature of township landscape. It is a relic from the times when Africans were subjects of power and the township was a restricted area; subject to laws, municipality by-laws and ordinances regulating people's movements and governing who may or may not enter the township. It is without irony when I say that billboards can be used as reference points when plotting the history and development of the township. Billboards capture and encapsulate ideology, the social, economic and political climate at any given time. They retain their appeal for social engineering.

Apartheid billboards were very austere, and were chiefly concerned with the 'sanitation syndrome'. The economic boom of the sixties introduced American style highway advertising billboards thus rendering Apartheid ideology anonymous and opaque. In the politically turbulent period of the '70s and '80 the overtly political billboards made their return. This time the struggle was for the hearts and minds of the populace. Recently, with the liberalization of politics the billboard is chiefly used to address the rising consumer culture and the anxiety caused by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This last is a campaign partly financed by government.

 
I read somewhere that ads create a sense of participating in the utopia of beauty: Life as it should be. A drive from the city into Soweto will quickly dispel this notion as misguided. Billboards line the freeway on both sides. In the name of freedom of speech one's cultural sensibility is assaulted by textual and visual messages. The trip can hardly be described as boring. Nobody ever complains of the visual pollution. At the high speed of a minibus taxi, the billboards roll by like flipping pages in a book. The retina registers arcane and inane messages about sex and cell-phones, mostly sex and cell-phones. Perhaps this is a coincidence. I wonder."

Santu Mofokeng

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photographs by Santu Mofokeng via 

The Tradwife Persona

For a great many women, tradwife is an identity. Tradwives are women who believe in what is considered as traditional gender roles usually including "hetereosexual marriage with masculine dominance and feminine subservience, child-rearing, homeschooling,  and right-wing political ideals". In his article, Proctor examines three well-known online tradwife persona: Alena Kate Pettitt (The Darling Academy), Caitlin Huber (Mrs. Midwest), and Ayla Stewart (Wife with a Purpose). 

His focus is on how forms of racism and sexism manifest in their performances to "1) establish tradwifery as a legitimate practice and form of identification, 2) illustrate how a person should act/talk/live to be considered a tradwife, and 3) establish themselves as part of a community of tradwives". 

Tradwifery is inherently sexist and explicitly anti-feminist since women are portrayed as subservient to men and feminism is attacked calling for a return to so-called traditional feminine gender roles. Many tradwives call their ideology and lifestyle "choice feminism". In other words, as the choices are made by women they are automatically declared to be feminist choices.

The decisions to stay at home “may be presented as entirely personal. However, they are inseparable from the profound crisis of both work and care under neoliberal capitalism” (Rottenberg & Orgad 2020). So those women who choose to not work are exercising a privilege to embody a traditional version of feminine gender roles, as these traditions are often “frozen moments in history arbitrarily chosen from the cultural repertoire as “the’ authentic expression of the national collective” (Christou 2020). Indeed, very likely these arbitrary historic traditions themselves are complete inventions (Hobsbawm 1992). For instance, it is a myth that women in the far past didn’t work. They were wives and mothers, but also worked the fields, brewed mead, sold and bartered goods, spun wool, and very often worked alongside guildsmen to learn a trade (Shahar 2003). By framing the woman’s role in the home as ‘traditional’, tradwives continue a long project of delegitimizing women’s contributions in the workforce as separate and less valid than the formalized economy of male labour (Milkman 2016).

While sexism is quite obvious, the link between tradwifery and racism is comparably more subtle. The movement promotes white, western heteronormative ideals of gender roles taken from white middle-class US-Americans in the 1950s. The construction of the fragile woman was something white women had access to, not Black women, as the distribution of labour was different among the Black population. The tradwife movement is not explicitly racist or extremist. However, tradwife culture is useful to white supremacists.

In 2018, Ayla Stewart (censored several times) described her site as "an online forum which brings together people interested in God's plan for happy families and wives dedicated to traditional homemaking. It also serves youth interested in an alternative to feminism and liberal ideology". While Stewart is vocal on issues of feminism and ethnicity, Caitlin Huber and Alena Kate Pettit shy away from overt statements and focus more on institutional and corporate aspects of their personas and making money.

Huber has a ‘Shop’ tab on her blog that links out to allow purchase of her “favourite things”. She does not produce these items, but in the site’s frequently asked questions, she explains: “I get ad money from YouTube from my videos, and when I do a sponsorship, I will negotiate to get paid. I also get a little money from any links that I offer to y’all from Amazon!” (Huber 2022). She is letting us know (with a colloquial “y’all”) that even though she is making money from this, she’s really just like us: a normal person, where ‘normal’ is code (for all three women) as white, middle-class, heterosexual, cisgendered, neurotypical, and able-bodied. Pettitt takes corporate agency a step further by offering her own books on ‘Traditional Lifestyle & Etiquette’—co-authored by herself and The Darling Academy—for purchase via Amazon link.

The author points out that while the concept of tradwifery clearly contains aspects of misogyny and white supremacy, not all tradwives are anti-feminists or white nationalists (Proctro, 2022).

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- Proctor, D. (2022). The #Tradwife Persona and the Rise of Radicalized White Domesticity. Persona Studies, 8(2), 7-26; link
- photograph via