FORGET the humdrum claptrap of a picture being worth a thousand words. If JM Coetzee gives you that many words, you immediately forget about the picture.
A good picture is better than an orgasm. You can quote me on that one.
Like a groupie, I am just mad about pictures and even madder about the lives of the men and women who shoot them, especially if these were not www lives - wazalwa, wadla, wafa.
I've never met Joao Silva. I only know him by reputation. And that is not the reason why I will not weep for him.
From what I've gathered about the life of this maverick photographer, he'd probably take pictures of your snotty face while you weep for him. Stepping on a landmine was always going to have disastrous effects, as Silva's own pictures of Mozambican victims will always bear witness. I can only echo our editorial comment of Tuesday that said: We wish him a speedy recovery and look forward to his first prize-winning shots on prostheses.
There's another lensman I want to bewail. Ernest Levi Tsoloane Kole. Let me hasten to spare you the misery of cracking your skull trying to figure out who the heck he is. His ancestors probably had the same headache in their quest to track him down. He went into exile in the late 1960s and changed his name to Ernest Cole.
It was not going to be a walk in the park for the spirits of his people to move from Eersterust, where he was born in 1940, to some address in New York, where he died "after 23 years of painful exile" to mistake a Cole for one of their own.
Dying at 50, Cole was somewhat of advanced years from the circle of those whose tragicomic lives feed my fetish. I remain of the old Drum school of thought that implored the living to die young and have a good-looking corpse.
Silva's contemporary, Kevin Carter, took his own life aged 34 after winning the much sought-after Pulitzer Prize. Am I guilty of a taste for the macabre if I confess to how gripping I find the story of his life, especially the picture that led to the prize and his suicide?
There's something about a life well lived that leads to it not mattering if you were a James Dean, Bob Marley, Steve Biko, Jimi Hendrix or even Jesus Christ. If you die a young achiever your legacy lives on ...
Kole, oops, Cole, left South Africa for exile because he wanted to publish a book!
Could there be anything more orgasmic?
The book, House of Bondage, was published in 1967 in the Big Apple "where it sold out in nine months"!
When you read about the lives of such people, you will surely agree with me, you do not need any concoction of aphrodisiacs to get high.
He next did a documentary film, a chapter of a book and an unpublished essay.
Not able to contend with such talent, apartheid had to hound him out of his country of birth before he could satisfactorily document the tauza, love across the colour bar and forced removals, among other subjects.
For this paparazzo, I just bawl my eyes out.
I stop, not to reach for the Kleenex but to take comfort in the excellent workmanship of his pictures. I stop crying because I recognise his genius in the work of the Bang Bang Club, especially Silva, who has a duty to leave hospital and get back to work.
If you die a young achiever your legacy lives on
FORGET the humdrum claptrap of a picture being worth a thousand words. If JM Coetzee gives you that many words, you immediately forget about the picture.
A good picture is better than an orgasm. You can quote me on that one.
Like a groupie, I am just mad about pictures and even madder about the lives of the men and women who shoot them, especially if these were not www lives - wazalwa, wadla, wafa.
I've never met Joao Silva. I only know him by reputation. And that is not the reason why I will not weep for him.
From what I've gathered about the life of this maverick photographer, he'd probably take pictures of your snotty face while you weep for him. Stepping on a landmine was always going to have disastrous effects, as Silva's own pictures of Mozambican victims will always bear witness. I can only echo our editorial comment of Tuesday that said: We wish him a speedy recovery and look forward to his first prize-winning shots on prostheses.
There's another lensman I want to bewail. Ernest Levi Tsoloane Kole. Let me hasten to spare you the misery of cracking your skull trying to figure out who the heck he is. His ancestors probably had the same headache in their quest to track him down. He went into exile in the late 1960s and changed his name to Ernest Cole.
It was not going to be a walk in the park for the spirits of his people to move from Eersterust, where he was born in 1940, to some address in New York, where he died "after 23 years of painful exile" to mistake a Cole for one of their own.
Dying at 50, Cole was somewhat of advanced years from the circle of those whose tragicomic lives feed my fetish. I remain of the old Drum school of thought that implored the living to die young and have a good-looking corpse.
Silva's contemporary, Kevin Carter, took his own life aged 34 after winning the much sought-after Pulitzer Prize. Am I guilty of a taste for the macabre if I confess to how gripping I find the story of his life, especially the picture that led to the prize and his suicide?
There's something about a life well lived that leads to it not mattering if you were a James Dean, Bob Marley, Steve Biko, Jimi Hendrix or even Jesus Christ. If you die a young achiever your legacy lives on ...
Kole, oops, Cole, left South Africa for exile because he wanted to publish a book!
Could there be anything more orgasmic?
The book, House of Bondage, was published in 1967 in the Big Apple "where it sold out in nine months"!
When you read about the lives of such people, you will surely agree with me, you do not need any concoction of aphrodisiacs to get high.
He next did a documentary film, a chapter of a book and an unpublished essay.
Not able to contend with such talent, apartheid had to hound him out of his country of birth before he could satisfactorily document the tauza, love across the colour bar and forced removals, among other subjects.
For this paparazzo, I just bawl my eyes out.
I stop, not to reach for the Kleenex but to take comfort in the excellent workmanship of his pictures. I stop crying because I recognise his genius in the work of the Bang Bang Club, especially Silva, who has a duty to leave hospital and get back to work.
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