Breathing Spaces exhibition can be viewed at UKZN Centre for Civil Society from 1 August - 3 September 2008.
About the Photographer
Oliver
grew up and lives in Wentworth, Durban. From 2003 to 2005, he was a
youth photographer for the Durban South Photography Project (DSPP),
taking place in community photographic workshops and exhibitions held
in Wentworth, Merebank and Lamontville. The DSPP culminated in the
exhibition in the Durban Art Gallery, Breathing Spaces: Environmental
Portraits of Durban's Industrial South, in 2007. Breathing Spaces will
also tour to Cape Town in 2008.
About the Durban South Photography Project
The
photographs formed part of the exhibition Breathing Spaces:
Environmental Portraits of Durban's Industrial South, at the Durban Art
Gallery in 2007, and which will open in Cape Town in February 2008.
Breathing Spaces exhibition can be viewed at UKZN Centre for Civil Society from 01 August - 03 September 2008.
It
is a photographic exploration of three Durban neighborhoods –
Wentworth, Merebank and Lamontville. The exhibition consists of
photography by Oliver Meth from the Centre for Civil Society at the
University of KwaZulu-Natal, taken from a larger collection of the
Durban South Photography Project.
Durban's urban geography
reflects race and class inequities that persist beyond apartheid.
Wentworth, Merebank and Lamontville (formerly categorised under
apartheid as 'coloured', Indian' and 'African') are located in the
immediate vicinity of refineries and other industry. The area has been
the centre of much controversy and activism about the levels of
industrial pollution experienced by residents. The exhibition inquires
into what it means to live in an environment still strongly structured
by the geographies of apartheid city planning, by poverty and
industrial pollution.
This is a photographic representation of
lives in Durban's residential-industrial hinterland, a part of the city
with rich local cultures and histories that have remained excluded from
Durban's visual identity as a city. The exhibition explores how
environmental injustice translates into day-to-day living and how
people have made lives for themselves, also asking questions about
gender and identity, and the experience of people from different
generations.
Contact: Oliver Meth via e-mail metho@ukzn.ac.za
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