I’ve whittled my work from Woodstock down to a number that I can at least show you in a slideshow — albeit a long one. I still need to edit it further down, but I think I’ll leave that for a few months to gain some distance. In the meantime, here it is, with a working title of Where will I spend my happy days?
Woodstock has a reputation for being dangerous. One person I spoke to said his wife was held up at gunpoint there, and another one told me he’d been mugged there. Someone else told me it was seriously dangerous, like murder dangerous due to all the gang activity there. Another (coloured) person told me that he feels much safer in historically Black areas than in historically Coloured areas like Woodstock. The Manager of the Woodstock Improvement District, who provided me with a security guard to help me in my project, told me he’s sick of this idea that Woodstock is dangerous. But when I asked if that meant that I could wander the streets by myself with my camera, he said no way. When he saw my camera he guffawed, “Shue! You’re crazy if you think can you walk around by yourself with THAT!”
It strikes me that the South African idea of safety is… well, skewed to say the least.
Being a mother, I had no interest in putting my life or mental health at risk, certainly not for photography, but I didn’t really feel like I was doing that in Woodstock. The problem was that I didn’t feel like I could trust my own judgment because there were probably all kinds of cultural cues I was missing. My safety meter wasn’t calibrated to Cape Town. So I began with a question, but my explorations quickly turned into an obsession with personal security and how people carry out their daily lives under the constant threat of being mugged or carjacked or killed.
My original goal with this project was to make enough good work to apply for grants to return and finish it over a longer term. But I think my love affair with South Africa has moved from the honeymoon phase to the morning after, and I’m not so interested in returning right now. As I’ve been attempting to edit this work, I keep feeling like it’s just unfinished. There are gaps and missing threads that if I’d had more time I could have figured out how to fill but I just didn’t have time to work through all that. Sadly, it might just remain unfinished forever, which feels like a terrible disservice to the people who helped me and invited me into their homes: Sam and her family at the Woodstock Torchbearer, the Woodstock Improvement District, the manager and residents of the Haven Old Age Home for the Destitute, Dennis, Jeffrey, Carol and Nathanial, Elizabeth and Lindsay, and Vanessa, among others.