Durban Beach, 29 December 2009

I grew up in a house with a copy of a very wide Lowry beach landscape depicting a dreary English seaside dotted with fully clothed match-stick figures hanging about, feet in the cold and damp sand, backs bowed by manual labour. The scene is overseen by an evil factory of the Industrial North West which is probably an art gallery now.

I stared at it for hours, but not long enough to differentiate it from a Pieter Bruegel the Elder in retrospect.

Both painters were trying to make a point about everyday life by choosing to depict ordinary folks getting along with their days and both painters painted their own biographies in a sense.

This photo of Durban beachfront is a celebration of people hanging loose a couple of days before New Year.

Booze is starting to raise the ante, some beach goers are chirping me and I am chirping them back. The barometric pressure is HIGH like when the coffee plunger will not plunge.

Lowry, the master of naive art, holds the record for the most honors declined.

Street photography is a broad church, and I've been included in Thames and Hudson's Street Photography Africa, in a chapter called Passing By.

From Thames and Hudson's page with the spec. on Street Photography Africa, due in October.

"From classic compositions of architecture, people, and movement, to street-style portraits and photographs of youth culture, music, and dance—the street becomes a stage. It's about identity, personality, and storytelling: friends skateboarding, a chance encounter, the hustle and bustle of megacities."

Archival inkjet on 300 GSM Paper

S 52 x 42 cms edition 1

M 75 x 60 cm edition of 1

L 120 x 105 cm edition 1

+1 a/p