Santu Mofokeng

These are images that urban black working and middle-class families had commissioned, requested or tacitly sanctioned. They have been left behind by dead relatives, where they sometimes hang on obscure parlour walls in the townships. In some families they are coveted as treasures, displacing totems in discursive narratives about identity, lineage and personality. And because, to some people, photographs contain the "shadow" of the subject, they are carefully guarded from the ill-will of witches and enemies. In other families they are being destroyed as rubbish during spring-cleans because of interruptions in continuity or disaffection with the encapsulated meanings and the history of the images. Most often they lie hidden to rot through neglect in kists, cupboards, cardboard boxes and plastic bags.

All too often these images run the risk of being dismissed or ignored as evidence of pathologies of bourgeois delusions. However, it should be pointed out that right from the turn of the century and even earlier there were Black people who spurned, questioned or challenged the government's racist policies. Many of those integrationists were people who owned property or those who had acquired Christian mission education, and they considered themselves to be "civilized". These people, taking their model from colonial officials and settlers, especially the English, lived a life in manner and dress very similar to those of European immigrants. The images depicted here reflect their sensibilities, aspirations and their self-image.