A moment of time captured in a permanent state. Intimate portrayals of fresh-faced youths. Flecks of haziness. A perfect balance of slightly saturated tones is met with vibrancy. Images of nostalgia.
Ricardo Simal is a Cape Town based photographer who refined his craft by studying at the Ruth Prowse School of Art. Moving to London he assisted highly regarded photographers such as David Sims, Patrick Demarchelier and Mert & Marcus working on titles that include ID, Dazed and Confused, W Magazine, Vogue and Tank Magazine.
Ricardo’s portrayal of his models translates as near documentary fiction and his viewer experiences a sense that he knows these people intimately. Looking through his body of work is like looking at the documentation and dissection of youth and youth culture with a raw unbevelled edge.
Engaging with any one of the images crafted with his lens is to become mesmerised and to experience a sense that you yourself know these models. The feeling can be described as looking at portraits of friends from a previous lifetime. His images ooze with emotion even in his editorial stylings.
Analysing the expanse of his work, it is clear that Ricardo is a classically trained photographer abiding by principles such as the rule of thirds. This choice in itself renders his depictions as natural due to his models appearing within a focus area that is preferred by the human eye. Another technique that he employs is the elimination of distracting objects adding to the captivating quality of his work. Images that appear near shadow-less results in an uplifting mood.
The aesthetic of his practice can be summarized as raw, honest, sensual and intuitive. Since his return to Cape Town Ricardo has built up an impressive client list consisting of Hugo Boss Eyewear, Woolworths, Esquire, Meso and Russh to list just a few.
In short, Ricardo’s work can be seen as an idealism. Photographing young beauties within light tonal values and the rules outlined in various photographic principles makes his aesthetic become pronounced. The world he creates is real and unreal simultaneously. The rawness he photographs with adds to the element of a sort of documentary that his work visually displays.
A moment is frozen in time. The beauty of youth captured. A soft approach with a tender touch. An unquestionable femme gaze. Flowers, low angle shots. Images close to nostalgia reminiscent of the MySpace era. Vibrancy. Colour tones of yellow, blues and pinks. A blown-out kiss.
Daria Kobayashi Ritch has become well known in photography, fashion and pop culture circles for her documentation of L.A.’s coolest. With more shoots and editorials of young celebrities being crafted by her lens her creative portfolio is blossoming to include names such as Willow Smith, Solange and Garage Magazine.
In an interview with INDIE Daria expresses that her photographic inclination was inspired during her adolescence when she and her friends got dressed up and took profile pictures for their MySpace accounts. Later in her life, she went on to study Fine Art at UCLA which she rounded off by attending art college.
Her mission with her work is to combine an intimate take on the people she photographs with the romantic mood of fashion. Daria is inspired by youth culture and subcultural movements that relate to the indie music scene. Taking this as a point of departure she sees an unexplored depth in these individuals that she visually unravels in her arresting imagery.
Daria acknowledges the difficulty of being a photographer, one that is not articulated enough. As a photographer, one has to establish an intimate relationship with your model in a matter of minutes. More frequent than not, people you don’t know and only just met on the day of the shoot.
The artist’s balancing act at present is between her artistic visualizations for herself and the fast world of fashion. Keep yourself up to date with new developments in her work here.
Forms of flesh awash with pale pink hues, steeped in the sounds Lana Del Rey’s youthful lullabies. Tendrils of smoke twist and turn off the tips of cigarettes, held gently between tentative fingers. Nostalgic desire captured by the grain of film. Intimacy found in those moments of home.
It was a Tuesday night. Photographer, Hana Sho, ventured over to a friend’s apartment in the Cape Town city bowl. Armed with only a studio light, a desk lamp, DIY gels and a few rolls of film she adopted her usual modus operandi of spontaneity and experimentation. “We’re all friends, and during the shoot it kind’ve felt like what they would usually do before going to a party, except I was documenting it. Have a few drinks, smoke cigarettes and try on each other’s clothes…It almost felt like a mini production team. Adam turns out to be a hella good Art Director. Alex popped in for some Art Direction, and Mziyanda pulled through with some bomb styling.”
Hana’s photographic work spans the space of portraiture, editorials, fashion and documentary style images. “When I shoot it’s always a collaboration.” She often goes for a walk with the model before the shoot – as a means to put them at ease. “I find that walking around and getting to know somebody makes them more comfortable, and whatever mood their feeling in that moment reflects in the photographs.” Hana also values collaboration as a space of learning, “from my experience, collaborative work is always better and has other layers of meaning that I wouldn’t have thought of… I’ve learned so much from the collaborators I’ve had the pleasure of working with.”
After discovering her mother’s old Nikon from the 90s, she bought some film and started taking photographs of her friends. “I realized film gave a more three-dimensional affect. I can’t describe it, but it’s so much more textured and alive.”
For Boys in Light, Hana took the opportunity to play with light and explore expressions of youth on film. “My concepts are always based on people and how they portray themselves – everyone’s just trying to figure themselves out; experimenting, having fun, making mistakes and learning from them. I think I’ve managed to capture those sweet in between moments where everyone kind of forgets.” She described a shift in the atmosphere when the lights used in her images were turned on, “It felt like we stepped into another realm where everyone could express their alter egos.”
“I think collaboration is definitely an important part of learning and developing as a young artist, whatever the medium may be.”
Over the years, Joburg has acquired a formidably dangerous cinematic image. Local crime films like Tsotsi, Jerusalema and iNumberNumber are built on scenes of hijacked buildings and explosive violence. International sci-fi such as Dredd, the atrocious Chappie and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter extend this visual mayhem to the future. But as film historian Alexandra Parker argues in her book Urban Film and Everyday Practice, the suburbs have generally lacked such a definitive sense of place. Its main role is as a placid façade, contrasted with the apparent disorder of the city around it.
But for director Sibs Shongwe-La Mer, the “daydream/purgatory of suburbia’’ is a source of profound inspiration. His feature production Necktie Youth, released when he was only 23, follows its cast through the sprawl of manicured gardens, anonymous car parks and ominously quiet streets which cascade out around the inner city. Atmospherically filmed in black and white, the story follows a social group of privileged youths snorting, fucking and generally losing their damn minds. While the film can often be raw, and its protagonists unsympathetic, this is an accurate representation of their state of terminally arrested adolescence. For Shongwe-La Mer, who also acts in the film, the project was a reaction to his own experience of growing up in the city- “I think Johannesburg is very much a part of my DNA and psychology, whether I like or not. It informs a lot of my observation and feelings and then quite naturally seeps into my cinematic sensibilities.”
His work is informed by a rich knowledge of cinema history, drawing inspiration from European masters like Pier Paolo Pasolini, and contemporary auteurs like Wong Kar-Wai. Wai’s lovelorn Hong Kong nights are an obvious touchstone. But above all, he regards French director Jean-Luc Godard as a primary influence. The imprint of Godard films like Breathless and Bande à Part is all over Necktie Youth, particularly with its portrayal of hyper-consumerist, nihilistic characters. The film elegantly reapplies techniques from the 1960s French New Wave into 21st century Johannesburg. Its most striking feature is the use of black and white, which it uses to capture the long shadows of life under the Highveld sun. The film excels at capturing the eerie stillness that you can often find in Johannesburg- an empty park, the deserted streets at night. As the director himself describes it, his work aims to capture “that sense of blissful alienation”.
His jaded characters are representatives of a cultural shift in South Africa, as the ‘born free’ generation enter their twenties. But such focus on what he astutely calls “the decadent world of the noveau rich” has a global pertinence. And he has been noticed abroad with a frankly dizzying array of international projects lined up. As he told us:
“There’s a lot happening at the same time right about now. We are blessed to be working on a US television debut with Charles King and the good folks at Macro in Hollywood.
The series shoots in eight different capitals across the world and features subculture influencers such as Grimes, Justice, Prayers and others. It’s a cross continental love affair So we are busy casting and packaging that. We have a feature film, The Sound of Animals Fighting that shoots in Brazil later this year starring Yung Lean and other talent that I’m really excited about. Our new feature company is also working with Mille Et Une in Paris on a really ambitions South African epic, Color Of The Skull, and some American writers on a Chicago gang story that we are looking at executive producing as an American series.”
Having already achieved a confident directorial voice at a young age, his next projects are poised to take a vision honed in the Northern suburbs to the world.
After spending some time thinking about how she could combine her love for fashion, art, music, and desire to work with creatives, young designer Robyn Keyser launched her label Artclub and Friends in November 2016. At the core of the label is ensuring that everything is locally made.
As a label they are trying to create clothing that reflects youth culture and the kinds of conversations that young people are having at the moment. This can be seen in their first collection which combines traditionally masculine cuts with colours that are usually translated as feminine colours. The merging of these replicates post-gender conversations which subvert the assumption that there are only two genders and that each of these can only be associated with particular styles. This exploration of gender neutral clothing also comes from a personal space for Robyn. Growing up she considered herself a tomboy and refused to wear the colour pink because of what it represented. However, it has been interesting for her coming into contact with the colour as she has gotten older. This can be seen in the t-shirt which has “Pink is not a gendered colour” printed on it. The vision is to make clothing that people wear because they want to, not because it has been dictated to them.
The name Artclub and Friends reflects how Robyn imagines her label being involved in a number of collaborative projects. The tagline ‘Wear me and make art’ captures this desire to collaborate with artists, performers, musicians to create clothing that speaks to a variety of people and can become physical manifestations of her emphasis on working with and caring for people. Their first of these projects was a collaborative t-shirt design with Thor Rixon in conjunction with his launch of ‘Songs from the Bath’. Artclub and Friends is also planning to invite artists to combine their chosen mediums with clothing and curate an exhibition for charity.
Paying homage to where she draws inspiration from is part of the foundation of Artclub and Friends. It’s about “understanding inspiration, acknowledging it, giving credit where due. Not just about seeing a trend, adapting. It’s about understanding what you are designing,” Robyn explained.
Be sure to check out their Instagram page and website to have a look at their first collection and to keep up with what they have planned for the year.
Fashion label Glitter Betty from up-and-coming designer Khensani Mohlatlole exemplifies all things young and fun. Inspired by babes like Fela Gucci and Desire Marea from FAKA, she conjures up whimsical, textured garments and accessories.
Glitter Betty started from Khensani’s obsession with thrift shopping and upcycling in high school and became an extension of a her blog Glitter Daiquiri. With her currently studying fashion, the label has transitioned from upcycling to the creation of her own designs. Khensani has always been drawn to glitter, and anything reminiscent of fun, sparkle and eccentricity. Khensani describes her label as the meeting point between cute, sexy and quirky. “That’s what I wanted the name and idea [for the label] to give off.”. Her latest collection channels the spirits of Cher, Diana Ross and Grace Jones with cheeky silhouettes that subvert the assumed subtly and romance of sheer, velvet and satin.
Reflecting on how she interprets her audience, Khensani explained that, “People are more interested in the fact that there clothes are ethically made, they know who made them and that everything they are getting is unique, not just trend-happy, fast fashion.”. This is reflected in her approach to try and create clothing that means something. She is interested in new ways we can reinvent fashion and strip it of being strictly women’s wear or menswear. She is thinking about creating gender-neutral collections this year. “It’s more liberating,” she continues, “You’re not confined to a certain number of silhouettes or fabrics. It’s about what you feel looks good and putting it on a body.”.
She has recently partnered up with Botswana brand by Mboko Basiami, Glotto. “We have both been on each other’s radar but she took the plunge and contacted me. We both dress the same type of person but in different ways,” Khensani explained. At the moment they are sharing space on Glitter Betty’s online store, but have plans to work on a collection together to be released later this year.
Check out the Glitter Betty Instagram page or website to view the latest collection and to an eye out for her collaboration with Glotto.
“There are venues and there are institutions”, I was once told: a friend attempting to draw categories in Johannesburg’s night-time cartography. Undoubtedly, Kitchener’s (or KCB) falls into the latter group. It’s the ‘go-to’ club when you have no prior plans. It’s the comfort of knowing the sound and crowd to expect when you arrive. It’s the ease of no dress code and affordable entrance fees. It’s the knowledge that you’ll likely see at least ten other people you know. “If the question is, where do we go to party [tonight], we are the first call”, says DJ/manager Andrew Clements.
Among the audiences, artists and curators of KCB are those who speak of it as ‘home’. “Home isn’t where you come from”, said author Pierce Brown, “It’s where you find light when all grows dark.”
If KCB is a home, it is one whose family stretches back generations. The pub/hotel was built in 1902 and is regarded as the second oldest building in Johannesburg. It is a testament to the historical centrality of our night venues. Radium Beer Hall, Kitchener’s Carvery Bar (KCB), Guildhall Pub have watched generations of dreamers and workers spill their histories over bar counters — wrestling with the possibilities and futures of the city. Marc Latilla, one of the first DJs to ever play at KCB, has sought to archive the venue’s history: another indication that night-dwellers are often keepers of suppressed urban narratives.
According to Latilla, by the end of the 18th century, Braamfontein had transformed from farmlands into a thriving middle-class suburb. The Milner Park Hotel, now known as Kitchener’s, was built in 1902, surrounded by German businesses. It served as a drinking hole for British troops, as well as postal riders on their way to Pretoria. In 1902, towards the end of the Second South African War, Lord Milner had a meeting with the notorious commander of the British forces, General Lord Kitchener, in the newly-built hotel. Kitchener had been a brutal warlord: primary instigator of South Africa’s concentration camps, in which thousands of Boers and black Africans were killed, mostly women and children. The name ‘Kitchener’s’ is thought to have arisen from this “auspicious” meeting.
If KCB is a home, this is the family’s ugly origins: it’s ancestral elder, a colonial brute, whose legacy continues to cause disquiet among his descendants. Still, his portrait hangs from the mantelpiece, above the figurative fireplace, where his great grandchildren dance and cuss and caress and worship, along with the descendants of his victims. These young ones burst through at night, trampling on grandma’s wooden floors, spilling on the old carpet, brushing past the velvet wallpaper. Each time, confronting history with a cocktail of detachment, denial, and dissent. It is a story of “dancing on graves”, of repossessing haunted spaces. You see it not only here but in the parties at the old train station, Halloween blowouts at the Voortrekker Monument, projected images of Hector Peterson at Soweto’s Zone 6.
The new generation of revelers took root at KCB in 2009, when Andrew Clements began using and hiring out the old hotel for parties. “This used to be just an old man’s club”, Andrew explains,“where a bunch of 60-year-olds would come every day at lunchtime, have a few beers, and then come back again after work. By 6 or 7 the place would close up”. But as DJ’s re-imagined the dusty Bar and Carvery, and the parties grew, and KCB quickly became a living room for young creatives, experimenters, hipsters, and students.
If KCB is a home, then, like any other home, it is not just about love, safety, memory and identity. There is also domestic power and sources of conflict. A strong sense of community often comes with a shared culture: away of dressing, speaking, moving on the dance floor, that has the potential to alienate others. Money, too, can also mess with families. One regular told me that he experienced a class territorialism that would make it difficult for someone who regularly partied at a tavern to party at KCB. To add to this are gender disparities, with femme bodies particularly under threat. Elders and relatives may try to intervene: we’ve seen dance floor dissent at the monthly Pussy Parties, the introduction of a female bouncer, regular and recognizable door staff, and a huge diversity of music genres to boost inclusivity. But families, inevitably, are sources of both contest and comfort.
If KCB is a home, it is one built on music. For years, DJ’s Rosie Parade and Danger Ngozi, of Broaden a New Sound, have curated its sonic identity,rooted in quality, pioneering music. There are family reunions with regular artists and promoters: 2 Sides of the Beat, Kid Fonque, BeatNN and Subterranean Wavelength. And then there are visits from distant relatives. This year: Tendai ‘Baba’ Maraire, Hussein Kalonji, Tama Sumo and Lakuti. And of course there are family events: Disco de la Mode is a group trip to the beach; Below the Bassline a spiritual gathering around the dinner table, and Zonke Bonke like your uncle’s birthday party.The soundtrack is not from your radio or television. It’s the specially-curated playlists that this family has come to love: exchanging sounds, travels and collections across time and space. Like all good household gatherings, the food keeps coming till the early hours of the morning. At 4am, you’re helping your exhausted cousin out the door. And, as author Wendy Wunder once said of a home: “It feels good to leave. Even better to come back”.
Introducing our new feature: Bubblegum Club Stories. Each week we will put together a short video to let you know what has happened and what is happening in Johannesburg’s creative scene. We will be following creatives and giving you the scoop on what they are working on and what’s on their minds. We will be filling you in on cool events, parties, exhibitions, stores and what people are wearing the streets. Adding to this will be behind the scenes snippets from some of our shoots for our cover features.
Our first episode features a party hosted by Weheartbeat at Poolside in Maboneng with Lowkey and special guest Eric Lau. We caught up with Urban Mosadi’s creative mind Tiisetso Molobi about the brand and what we can expect to see this year. We visited Dipstreet store and had a chat with owner Tusa Mamba about street fashion and what Dipstreet has to offer. For all the art lovers we include images of the collaborative exhibition by Ayanda Mabulu and James Delaney titled “Footprints on Commissioner Street 1886 – 2016”.
The ‘Turn-up Talk Series’ is a collection of discussions in which young Jo’burgers share their nocturnal lives: stories and reflections from the city’s dancefloors. The candid conversations explore nightclubs as stages for young people’s negotiations of identity, belonging and power.
‘In this episode, we talk about music, moves and what they say about us’
The ‘Turn-up Talk Series’ is a collection of discussions in which young Jo’burgers share their nocturnal lives: stories and reflections from the city’s dancefloors. The candid conversations explore nightclubs as stages for young people’s negotiations of identity, belonging and power.
TCIYF are a dirty-riffed, crass, thrash punk band with Pule on vocals, Thula on guitar, Tox on bass, and Jazz on drums. Started by members of the Skate Society Soweto family, they’re leading the rule-breaking, Sowetan skate and rock revolution with their uninhibited, conformist-refusal; spitting-out in vulgar lyrics and frantic drum smashes. Fuck your civilisation, with the uncensored and inappropriate thrust of hard-ons and hot tempers. Are you softer if you don’t have to face it?
Most of the articles I’ve read about them say they don’t give a fuck. But that’s bullshit; they just don’t give a fuck about things they’re told to with no reason. They actively smash empty nine-to-five high regard. They’re making new meaning through their own kind of value. These members sweat against the system that would have them punch their lives into the monotonous grind of no-hope. They’re a generation of redefine; tearing down as they build; making the songs, making the videos, making the art, making the events, making the half-pipes, making the subversive sub-culture in all of its unrestrained and unrefined, DIY glory.
It’s self-written, it uses its hands, it’s a fever that licks to the bone and brings blood together. Fatherless kids choosing their family in punk-fuck freedom. It can see the sexless suck-dry and the hollow-out, the ‘two rand, two rand’ Nyaope zombies skulking new victims through the night. It knows the way the haunt takes hold, and the way you have to shake it out; makes spaces for bodies to jump and fall and be lifted and shoved-forward in abandon. They can see you and they’ve got you; real care buried in the reckless purge.
No one’s going to seize this. It’s got the speed of where it comes from. It’s a kind of sacred profanity. Strung-out sincerity unfiltered at five in the morning. It’s a code that can’t be commodified, held up in the kind of respect you never have to articulate to understand; it’s checking-in with your grandmother, turning off the TV, chilling in the crowd before the show, not replacing your brother when he has to disappear for a year, working hard without fronting, disrupting the stage-space by being on the floor with your friends. It’s a new ritual of youth unhindered, staring death down, because no matter what, you’ll have what you created; the justified rage of the impossible moment made real. If all you can see is the filth of provocation, then you can get lost; this is a forceful stripping-down of all the crap that crowds in and it’ll always move faster than your patronising condescension.
Keep glued to TCIYF Facebook pagefor their upcoming full-length album, kicking-in soon with rapist-slayers and crash-landings from outer space. You can also catch them live, in all their gritty imperfection, at the Hostile Takeover in June. Smash it up and hand it over. The rare breed and the raw edge. Bite more than you can chew. And keep going harder… together; faster, faster, faster, until there’s cum in your face.
Last October, BubblegumClub (in collaboration with WeHeartBeat) hosted the first in an ongoing series of cultural experiments. For the USB Soundsystem event, held in Melville, a cast of local tastemakers were invited to an open DJ booth. Guests were asked to each play three songs. Rather than mixing skills, the criteria was simply to bring interesting music to a public venue. From beloved hits to obscurities from the darkest crevices of the internet, they just needed to arrive with a USB drive. (Although a professional DJ was on to hand to guide them through any technicalities!)
The concept for the event was to ‘democratise the dancefloor’. As many of the participants interviewed below discuss, the format became a personal challenge. How can you represent yourself, tell your personal story in three pieces of recorded sound? For filmmaker Lebogang Rasethaba, the event offered to bridge the gap between personal taste and public space. Participants agree that getting to share tracks with such intimate significance was an empowering experience. The result was an eclectic mix, from Grime bangers to Frank Ocean’s epic Pyramids.
The ubiquitous USB drive was developed in the mid 90’s and since then has subtly changed our lives. They are small and easy to lose, but contain entire cultural universes in their hardened exteriors- galaxies and constellations of music, film and data. They are both personal and social, reflecting both their owners taste and that of the friends they share and swap with. The Soundsystem event shows that no matter how small the storage technology may get, music is always the most powerful force to bring people together.
