A Local Habitation: Photographing Settler Buildings in South Africa's Eastern Cape

拟议的研究将包括拍摄殖民地存在的影响的证据，更具体地说，“英国化”对南非东开普省小城镇的建筑环境（包括具体建筑和一般城镇景观）的影响。这一地区是英国人向南非移民的最大一次，1820年有4000名定居者在政府资助的计划下抵达。由广泛的阶级和职业组成的定居者逐渐克服了当地政治和恶劣的自然环境的问题，建立了一些小城镇，以及伊丽莎白港。许多19世纪世纪的“定居者”建筑仍然存在，同时还有最近的证据表明，现在是后阿帕拉时代。因此，这一地区的建筑环境提供了一个精确的痕迹，无论是物质上的还是文化上的，都是讲英语的白色南非文化的野心、坐标和命运的变化。特别是，该地区的小城镇的特点是丰富的公民，乡土和家庭建筑可追溯到世纪中期，但现在非常广泛的特点是后殖民重新分配，或忽视。因此，他们作为一个详细的文化，告知他们，其当代条件的圣物箱。所选的城镇都带有强烈的“后殖民”特征，因为它们在很大程度上被白色中产阶级抛弃，并被当地社区占用。这使得它们和它们的建筑成为变化和过渡过程的图形视觉晴雨表。事实上，这个项目与通道和短暂性以及在场都有关系，并以可见证据的模糊性为基础。因此，与其说它是一个目录或记录的尝试，不如说它是对自己所创造的特定遭遇的一种追踪。在这方面，它涉及摄影和纪录片实践中的重要问题。该项目将以定居者经历的模糊性作为其创始假设，这承认了当前的后殖民时期，以及英国在海外的命运和变化，因此它将引起历史学家，文化地理学家和人类学家的兴趣，以及那些更直接关注视觉文化和纪实摄影的人。在这些相互重叠的领域中，福尔斯的传统关注的是适当的自我反思，并避免简化和意识形态扭曲往往涉及描绘“他者”。在摄影方面，这项工作将集中在传统的基于暗房的单色打印制作。在普遍数字化的时代，这种媒介的潜在用途和所提出的认识论问题是该项目实践研究维度的重要元素。这个项目是从我的AHRC资助的项目“定居者国家”发展而来的，现在已经接近完成。“定居者的国家”使用单色纪实摄影来看看1820年定居者的遗产，通过肖像的后裔和定居者存在的痕迹在景观，并集中在较低的奥尔巴尼地区。“当地居住”将建立在这项工作和通过它获得的理解，同时扩大所涵盖的地理地形，同时采取更集中和选择性的方法来处理主题和摄影表现。这项工作将在南非和这个国家展出，并将整理一个网站（我精通网站设计和建设），并作为一本书出版。

The proposed research will consist of the making of photographs of the evidence of the influence of colonial presence and, more particularly, 'Britishness' on the built environment (both specific buildings and general townscapes) of small towns in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. This area was the site of the single biggest migration of British people to South Africa, when 4000 settlers arrived under a government-sponsored scheme in 1820. Comprising a broad range of classes and occupations the settlers gradually overcame the problems of local politics and the inhospitable natural environment, to establish a number of small towns, and the city of Port Elizabeth. Much 19th century 'settler' architecture still remains, alongside more recent evidence of the Apartheid and, now, post-Apartheid, eras. The built environment of this region therefore provides a precise trace of the shifts, both material and cultural, in the ambitions, co-ordinates and fortunes of Anglophone white South African culture. Particularly, the smaller towns of the region are characterised by a wealth of civic, vernacular and domestic building dating back as far as the middle of the 19th century, but now very broadly characterised by post-colonial reappropriation, or neglect. They therefore serve as a detailed reliquary of the culture that informed them, and of its contemporary condition. The towns chosen are all strongly marked by signs of the 'post-colonial', inasmuch as they have been largely abandoned by the white middle class, and appropriated by local communities. This makes them, and their buildings, graphic visual barometers of a process of change and transition. Indeed, the project has as much to do with passage and transience as with presence, and is grounded in the ambiguities of visible evidence. It is therefore not an attempt at a catalogue or record so much as a trace of the particular encounters of its own making. In this respect it touches on vital questions in photographic and documentary practice. This project will take as its founding assumption the ambiguities of the settler experience, This acknowledges the present post-colonial moment, and the fate and inflections of Britishness abroad, and as such it will be of interest to historians and cultural geographers and anthropologists, as well as to those more directly concerned with visual culture and with documentary photography. Within these overlapping fields it falls within traditions concerned to be appropriately self-reflexive and to avoid the simplifications and ideological distortions often involved in portrayal of the 'other'. Photographically, the work will be centred on the making of traditional darkroom-based monochrome prints. The potential uses of, and epistemological questions posed by, this medium in an age of universal digitisation, are an important element of the practice-as-research dimensions of the project. The project grows from my AHRC-funded project 'Settler Country' that is now nearing completion. 'Settler Country' uses monochrome documentary photography to look at the heritage of the 1820 settlers via portraiture of descendents and traces of settler presence in the landscape, and is concentrated in the lower Albany area. 'A Local Habitation' will build on this work and the understandings derived through it, by simultaneously expanding the geographic terrain to be covered, while taking a more concentrated and selective approach to subject-matter and photographic representation. The work will be exhibited both in South Africa and in this country, and will be collated for a web site (I am proficient in website design and construction) and for publication as a book.