Portraits
Home for Intellectually Disabled in South Africa suffering.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa
Little Eden is the permanent home to 300 residents who have profound intellectual disability, the majority of whom have been discarded and abandoned by society. Although the average age of their residents is 20 years, the average intellectual age is that of a one-year-old.
Affected negatively by the Post Office strike they did not receive donations like usual and as an extra blow they couldn’t send letters to usual donators, asking for help.
Furthermore the South African Government decided that they would only give them money at the end of the month and not at the beginning as was normally the case. So they have a huge backlog on money to care for residents.
PICTURE: CORNÉL VAN HEERDEN
#photography #photojournalism #documentary #mental #southafrica #africa #mentalhealth
Gerard Rudolf
Chander Pahar actor Gerard Rudolf.
Nelson Mandela: From Alexandra to Houghton
In 1940, a 22-year old recently politicized Nelson Mandela found himself expelled from Fort Hare University for his involvement in a student strike. On the cusp of an unwanted arranged marriage, he escaped his home in the Eastern Cape for the promise of Johannesburg. Mandela ended up in Alexandra (or Alex), a sprawling township known as ‘Dark City’ because of its lack of electricity.
“Alexandra occupies a treasured place in my heart,” Mandela wrote in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom.
“Life in Alexandra was exhilarating and precarious. Its atmosphere was alive, its spirit adventurous, its people resourceful. In spite of the hellish aspects of life in Alexandra, the township was also a kind of heaven.”
As the struggle continued, Mandela found himself in other neighbourhoods, including Orlando in Soweto. Later he was moved across the country where he spent 27 years in prison. After South Africa’s transition to democracy, and following his single term as president, Mandela moved back to Johannesburg, to what would be his final home in Houghton, a wealthy and opulent suburb north-east of the city centre.
Today, Alex is still steeped in crime and poverty. Steel shacks echo across the township, while refuse and rubbish litters many streets and alleyways.
Although Alex is just a 15-minute drive away from Houghton, Mandela’s first and last homes are, in many ways, still a world apart.
Johannesburg: Inner-city organic vegetable garden
In the year 2006 in Betrams, just off the border of central Johannesburg and a stone
throw away from the Ellis park Stadium, two unused bowl courts where changed into a
vegetable garden by Maria Maseko. Today Amon Maluleke is the manager of the
Bambanani vegetable garden. He is a full time landscape technician and main
supervisor of the Johannesburg sports grounds not far from there. During his lunch
times, early in the morning and after work he spends his time at the garden. He comes
from the Limpopo area and has finished a certificate in horticultural studies. This is
however not all that he does.
He is currently studying towards a diploma in ornamental horticulture. He has worked on his
brother’s farm where he started to learn to make vegetable gardens as part of his
punishment. This has followed him to Johannesburg and he couldn’t stop making
vegetable gardens since then. The garden has now 8 gardeners of which 2 are full
time employed. Bambanani vegetable gardens deliver vegetables to a few Spar
retailers and to the Bryanston Organic market in the area. It just goes from strength to
strength.
Beautiful ballerinas from St Petersburg Ballet Theater performing Swan Lake
Paul Eilers, Director of Verraaiers, for Rapport
Shot Portraits of Paul Eilers, well known South African actor, producer and director of Verraaiers.
Story: (Afrikaans) http://www.rapport.co.za/Rubrieke/HanlieRetief/Aaklige-klein-Paultjie-is-nou-regisseur-en-die-actor-whisperer-20130302
Fanie de Villiers, author of ‘Kontrei’ and ‘Werfsonde’, in the streets of Yeoville, Johannesburg.
Fanie de Villiers, writing as Kleinboer, has written a new Afrikaans book, Werfsonde. I was commissioned to take a portrait of him and decided on these pictures.
He stays in Yeoville, that’s why we were in the streets of Yeoville. Yeoville is a predominantly black area and he is of the few white people who still live there.
The images are dark and surreal because he writes about brothels and having sex with black prostitutes.
I used of camera flash with a softbox attached, to the left.
Dragged my shutter to create the blurring of street and car lights.
Used second curtain flash to freeze my subject when and where I wanted to.
Original story by Pauli van Wyk: (Afrikaans)
http://www.beeld.com/In-Diepte/Nuus/Onder-vier-oe-Gewoontes-en-begeertes-20121116
Jesus Christ Portrait
While on another story I shot this picture of a man looking at the Portrait of Jesus Christ.
We were inside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
CORNEL VAN HEERDEN 