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| David Goldblatt, Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, in the time of Aids. 13 October 2004, 2004, archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper, 99 x 127cm |
Fishing with my father off the coast of Durban,just outside the entrance to the harbour on a 4.5m inflatable, semi-rigid rubber duck. Royal blue with yellow trim. A Dorado on the line, a streaking flash of brilliant colours through the water, golden green, azure, a rounded nose, a Winston you would call it on a person. Landed, the 8kg beast thrashes on deck as its gills find themselves unaccustomed to the oxygen that human lungs so readily enjoy. With a cruel blow to the back of its head to relieve this breathless anguish, the colours fade as the life drains. South African photography is not known for its particularly striking or even daring colours. Rather it is the banal, abject and quotidian that has come to characterise photographic representation under our new democratic dispensation. And this is murder. Not murder in the instant, life-ending way. But murder in the sense that one would murder a fish. Beat it over the back of the head and watch as the life drains, as the colour fades.
