Your Hometown.

Been busy planning ( I think I have already said...) This might have been better suited to my Monday Morning lyrical reference, but the fact is, with all the coffee and insomnia of late (a connection, perhaps?) I have been focusing on old projects; and Springsteen features heavily in that. There are those out there who get my obsession with The Boss; one such group would be Die Heuwels Fantasties. Anyway, there are songs I often reference, and continue to do so as "emotional triggers"... perhaps. I realised when viewing Springsteen on VH1 Storytellers that I take more cues from his process than his product, though I was clearly unaware of it at the time.

But... these images are of a yet uncompleted project on my old stomping grounds near Air Force Base Ysterplaat in Cape Town, all in Brooklyn and Ysterplaat itself. The shot of the abandoned car , oddly enough, is behind a community church that featured on the cover of the first release of 7th Breed... the first band of Wynand Myburgh of Fokofpolisiekar and Van Coke Kartel. Small world.

















The colour represents the more idyllic memories of the place, all shot on cooked 800 ISO tourist film, through an Olympus Mju with a fixed 35mm lens... that was never lifted to my eye. I now have a little Lomo that fulfils much the same purpose. Gotta love that tourist film. These shots are all of how I remember Brooklyn being... the black & white is how I saw it, on returning 11 years later. I used to make a very specific effort to separate my colour and monochrome work... I couldn't be bothered any more, though I do still "see" in B&W. There are no "safety" reasons attached, as I have learned some think.

















Have had some odd reaction to some of these images... hobbyists over-analysing, and such. They have been viewed online, as well as part of Old Mutuals arts programme in connection to the whole Cinema Nouveau set-up, when City Of God first came out... for me, they are personal, reflective of a time around my wedding and first learning of the fact I was going to become a father. Like the song, they started with one role in mind, and shifted to the other...

A work in progress...

"Now Main Street's whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more
They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back to your hometown.

Last night me and Kate we laid in bed talking about getting out
Packing up our bags maybe heading south
I'm thirty-five we got a boy of our own now
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good look around
This is your hometown." - Bruce Springsteen

Later.