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JURGEN SCHADEBERG |
| In a very interesting way, Jurgen Schadeberg's contribution to the Sophiatown Renaissance in the 1950s is comparable to Winold Reiss's contribution to the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. They are both very important German artists who made incalculable contributions to black cultures that were in the process of forging the artistic forms of expression as a way of indicating their entrance into modernity. Schadeberg's artistic realm is that of photography, that of Reiss was in the fine arts (artistic design, painting, drawing). In the same way that Reiss had a pronounced effect on African American artists such as Aaron Douglas and perhaps also Jacob Lawrence, Shadeberg likewise had a similar effect on African photographers like Bob Gosani, Peter Magubane, Victor Xashimba, Alf Kumalo, Ernest Cole and others. Given that the major literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Countee Cullen had inestimable influence on the principal figures of the Sophiatown Renaissance such as Ezekiel Mphahlele, Henry Nxumalo, Lewis Nkosi and Bloke Modisane, the cross referencing of Reiss and Schadeberg has legitimacy. Alain Locke, the dean of the Harlem Renaissance, and editor of The New Negro (1925), the text that gave quintessential representation to this cultural movement, did not demure in giving full recognition to Winold Reiss's imaginative power to capture the black experience: "The art lay-out of The New Negro, including cover design, decorative features and illustrations, represent the work of Winold Reiss, who has paintakingly collaborated in the project to give a graphic interpretation of Nego life, freshly conceived after its own patterns. Concretely in his portrait sketches, abstractly in his symbolic designs, he has aimed to portray the soul and spirit of a people. By the simple but rare process of not forcing an alien idiom upon nature, or a foreign convention upon a racial tradition, he has succeeded in revealing some of the rich and promising resources of Negro types, which await only upon serious artistic recognition to become both for the Negro artist and American art at large, one of the rich sources of novel material both for decorative and representative art" (The New Negro, p. 419). Could it not be said too of Jurgen Schadeberg that through photography he attempted to capture the soul and spirit of the Africa people. Nearly forty years after the fact, Shadeberg recalled the initial moment of his encounter with South African modernity as well as with novice artists who were subsequently to give unparalleled expression of it through photography: "In 1950, at the age of nineteen, I left Germany for distant and unknown South Africa. . . . I stepped off the Union Castle passenger liner in Cape Town a very young photojournalist. Since the age of fifyeen I had studied photography---first in Berlin and later in Hasmburg at the Deutsche Presse Argentur. . . . No jobs were to be had on newspapers in Johannesburg, but eventually in 1951, I was told by a photographer from a leading newspaper group that there was a job going on a magazine '. . . you know you wouldn't really like it. . . it's for Natives'. I jumped at the chance. The magazine was called The African Drum. Robert Crisp, a well known cricketer was the editor and co-founder of Drum. He interviewed me and I was taken on to become the fourth member of the Drum staff. There was Robert Crisp and Henry Nxumalo, who had the combined functions of writer, associate editor and sports editor, and a young Italian secretary called Mrs Thomas. . . . Henry Nxumalo and I teamed up and travelled around the country, covering sports events and interviewing politicians and socialites, filling Drum from cover to cover. . . . Later, in 1955, we employed the street-wise and tough Peter Magubane who joined us [Schadeberg and Bob Gosani] as a driver and messenger. He came with us on stories, assisting photographers. His interest in picture-taking grew and he soon transferred to the photographic department. Ernest Cole, Alf Kumalo, Victor Xashimba, Gopal Naransamy and many others later joined the department. Although none of these photographers had any formal training, the pictures they produced for the magazine were unusual and outstanding in their excellence" (Images from the black '50s, [ed.] Jurgen Schadeberg, 1994.) The importance of Schadeberg in the history of South African photography is evident in the fact that previous to the major figures of the Sophiatown Renaissance, there are no known major African photographers who practised photography as an art form. The vagaries of missionary propaganda and colonial anthropology made the gesturing towards photographic modernity impossible. Perhaps the singular achievement of Schadeberg in introducing Peter Magubane, Bob Gosani and others to photography is to have made possible the germination of photographic modernity among the African people. Although this contribution is inestimable, it should be remembered that it was attained by means of pedagogics rather than through the poetics of practice. Giving recognition to Schadeberg does not mean that he brought the idea of photography to the African people. It could be argued that the achievement of Schadeberg was facilitated by the book which was published exactly two decades before arriving in South Africa: T. D. Mweli Skota's The African Yearly Register (1930). This great biographical national dictionary which consists of pictures of New African intellectuals, writers, religious and political leaders, as well as pictures New African organizations, associations and clubs is what imprinted on the historical imagination and sensibility of the New Africans photographic modernity as an idea. Peter Magubane and others transformed this idea into an artistic expression. In the Preface, Mweli Skota makes clear that The African Yearly Register is about modernity, both historically and photographically: "For years the world has been wanting to know more about Africa and her people. And Africa, on account of her wonderful mineral wealth, has emerged from the dim background to the forefront of international importance. But little or nothing is known of her people. They are deemed to be savages prone to witchcraft, cannibalism and other vices credited to barbarians. . . . In this book the lives of such men as Tshaka, Moshoeshoe, Crowther, Tiyo Soga, Montsioa, Khame and others are portrayed by African contributors, and in each case a genuine historical summary has been given to show, without favour, the qualities of these sons [and daughters] of Africa. . . . The Editor also wishes to extend his profound thanks to Mr. H. I. E. Dhlomo for information and photographs appearing in the second part of this book, and to Mr. Govo, Mrs Mabaso, Rev. Bota and Mr. Motsieloa for the loan of some photographs" (p.xiii). Photography and modernity were inseparable for Mweli Skota: Skota was clear that the photographs of Alfred Mangena, Solomon T. Plaatje, Charlotte Manye Maxeke, Elijah Makiwane and of many other important New Africans would impress the New African masses of the historical necessity of modernity. The importance of this book was recognized by Sam Radithlalo in his presentation to a major conference organized two years ago by South African Museum in Cape Town: "Encounters with Photography: Photographing people in Southern Africa, 1860 to 1999" (July 14-17, 1999). In "Vanishing Cultures? Authority, Authorising, Representation in South African Photography", Radithlalo writes: "Photography imprints this perception on the populace, as the wonderful compendium by T. D. Mweli Skota, The African Register: Being an Illustrated National Biographical Dictionary (Who's Who) of Black Folks in Africa (1930/1) illustrates. The Register, a monumental feat of painstaking research (450 pages) which has until noe been under-utilised in South Africa for obvious reasons, is clearly a very impressive work featuring, North, South, East and West Africans prominent at the time of its publication, and including women. Quite apart from who's who, Skota had the foresight to include organised bodies, with photographs of deputations sent to England against the Colour Bar Act in the then Union in 1909 (294), the Land Act of 1913 in that year and further in 1918 (424), a veritable illustration of the Native Education system and expenditure, a province by province breakdown of the expenditure of the Native Development Account (Act No. 41 of 1925), and, lastly, the structures of schools such as the Ohlange Training Institution which was started by John L. Dube. This marked a significant breakthrough in that Skota institutionalised African claims to common citizenship through an intelligent selection of those perceived to have 'made' the grade of a claim to civilisation" (www.museums.org.za/sam/conf/enc/raditlhalo.htm). Similar to Radithlalo's, other presentations given at this conference, such as Kathleen Grundlingh's "Pictorial Approaches to Photographing People in South Africa 1906-1958", Jennifer Law's "Photomontage and the New Surrealism in South Africa", Alan Kirkaldy's "Picturing the Soul: Missionary Encounters in the late 19th and early 20th century South Africa", James McArdle's "After Life: The Paradox of the Photographic Portrait", Gerald Klinghardt's "The Photography of Georg Gustav Klinghardt in German South West Africa, 1896-1915", would provide a context in which to situate Jurgen Schadeberg's achievement within a longitudinal perspective. To conclude, it is because of Peter Magubane's great photojournalist talent from the 1950s to the 1990s, that has made Jurgen Schadeberg's coming to South Africa in 1950 such an auspicious moment. | |