"Vying Posie: Photographs by Peter McKenzie"
2005-05-10 until 2005-05-29
NSA Gallery
Durban, , ZA South Africa

Peter McKenzie, a well-known South African photographer currently based in Johannesburg, will be presenting his most recent project, a photographic exhibition and book in Durban. This project utilizes photographs of the Wentworth area where he grew up when his family was forced to move there under the apartheid segregation laws in the 1960s. Peter has kept close links with this township over the years and has synthesised his experience of this unique place into a thought provoking and visually rich body of work.

Peter's full body of work has always been greatly significant to the changing social history of South Africa, which has resulted in our transition to democracy. In the Wentworth project Peter has dug deep into his own very real experience of growing up in the area and used his probing intellect and finely honed photographic skills to present a unique glimpse into the lives of people and a place that are still very much outside the ideal of the "rainbow nation".

As the title denotes, this photographic project is a personal, spiritual and conceptual journey for the author, Peter McKenzie. He states: "I am from Wentworth but not of Wentworth, a concept that has guided - sometimes inadvertently - my way of 'seeing' the people of this place I still regard as 'my kasie'(my township). Ambivalent feelings of frustration, both mine and those of the community, coupled with the apathy of its peoples within a political system they feel has once again marginalized them, portray these coloured folk as waiting, waiting..."

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for South Africa

Other Important Exhibitions in South Africa