the black snapper

Interior Relations focuses on the intersection of post-Apartheid identities via photographic portraiture of black domestic workers who work in homes owned by white South Africans. Although these domestic workers and their employers remain separated by an enormous gulf in race, culture, education and poverty that characterizes much of South Africa today, they are often wedded by an intensely intimate, personal, and awkward interdependence.

These households are simultaneously private spaces for employers and public spaces for employees and ultimately political spaces where race, class and gender inequalities are negotiated. Most these relationships exist at a level of intimacy that is seldom experienced between other employers and employees. These relationships can hold a unique and enormous potential for change and transformation in a society that was previously so conflicted, in part because black and white South Africans led such separate lives. Now you find the women in the house, from different racial, cultural, and economic backgrounds, getting involved in the upbringing of each other’s children, cooking together, drinking tea together, and sharing intimate details of their lives together. The women on both sides of this relationship frequently turn to each other when there is crisis in their lives.

In this project, my intent is to capture some of the complexities that all South Africans face in creating and asserting post-Apartheid identities in the face of dramatic economic and cultural realities.

The women in these images were photographed using a 4×5″ camera as a means to create very formal portraits. They were asked to dress in their “favorite” clothes as a means to express their own identity within that environment. It was important that the women became active participants in the making of their portraits. The final prints are 30”x40” digital Chromogenic prints.

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