Spectators
Photographs by Jansen van Staden, Ollie Walker, and Nyancho NwaNri, previously featured on Tender Photo.
The most dramatic of this trio of photographs is Jansen van Staden’s picture of a street in Cape Town. In almost every case, the onlookers are seen with their lips apart, and their heads inclined aloft, in the same direction. Their pose indicates a climax of an incident whose resolution is not immediately apparent. Yet, in van Staden’s telling, it was an instance of a false fire alarm. Which is to say that the photograph, without additional context, can be seen as a drama with an unsatisfactory finale.
Ollie Walker’s photograph of spectators is quieter. The children with their backs to the viewer, who seem to wait with a collective pause, watch an older boy swing at a ball. Unlike the Cape Town photograph, we see what they see, as far as a well-tended stretch of grass and the fold of a hill. But if our gaze is on their backs, we have no access to the expressions on their faces, to note the extent of their admiration.
In the final photograph, by Nyancho NwaNri, three young men direct their gaze at anyone who directs a gaze at them. As NwaNri tells it, she went to the Kangkurang Festival, an annual festival founded to promote and preserve Gambia’s masquerade culture. And she found herself wondering why a young man showed up to a masquerade performance in a mask. “Was he merely trying to mimick the situation,” she asks? What is clear is that he is not content with simply being an observer; he also wishes to be observed. •••
This is the #8 edition of CONCORDANCE, a series of micro-essays in response to sequences of photographs previously featured on the newsletter. These notes, inspired by CORRESPONDENCES, points to affinities in style, mood, or theme between the tendered photos. The series will run for an initial period of 2 months (June 3—July 29).
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