This is Sandra
I shot a series of corporate head shots of Sandra for use on her business platform The Yacht Purser.
We decided to shoot on the jetties at the Royal Cape Yacht Club on the Foreshore in Cape Town. This is a short selection of images.
Tag: South African Women
Women Who Create is an ongoing portraiture project all shot in B&W in my studio in Woodstock, Cape Town. I love to connect with other creatives, see what motivates them and find out what is behind their work.
Apart from creating this portrait with Sanell I’ve had the honour of documenting and working with her on project she’s busy on at the moment. Working with Sanell is divine. I’d describe her as having an open heart, being blissfully talented and rocking to her own beat (in her studio with the music turned up).
Sanell Aggenbach is a South African artist living and working in Woodstock, Cape Town. Using painting, printmaking, and sculpture, her work addresses the relationship between history and private narratives, with a sense of ambiguity. Her work also explores the processes of nostalgia and historical myth-making, often incorporating the playful, disarming, and absurd to draw the viewer into discussions of darker subjects. She has a unique style of combining traditional painting techniques with sculptural elements, as well as typically feminine crafts such as sewing and tapestry. (-Wikipedia).
“My earlier works relied heavily on processing found imagery, rethinking associations and creating new fictions. These works were often an amalgamation of historic references with private narratives and forms part of a process of investigating pathologies and deconstructing the past. My primary intention is to construct subtle paradoxes by introducing a quiet humour, either formally or materially.”
Her explorative work has secured her many achievements including winning the Absa L’Atelier Award in 2003. Her work is represented in numerous public and private collections, including Sasol, Absa, Spier, SABC, Red Bull (Austria), the South African National Gallery, 21C Museum in Kentucky (USA) and Anglo Gold.
A Q&A with Sanell…
Why do you create?
It’s my most optimum method of communicating ideas, emotions and concepts.
What is your all time favorite quote?
JUST DO IT! The Nike slogan… because I’m a procrastinator and tend to overthink…
Do you have pet peeves?
Charlatans, frauds, fakes, those who manipulate or take advantage of well meaning or less fortunate individuals.
What is/are your greatest extravagance/s?
Books.
What defines your idea of happiness?
Swimming with my family – we are all water rats.
A person dead or living who you admire and why?
Louise Bourgeois – she was an influential artist who only came into prominence very late in her life. Her unyielding persistence, her courage to challenge and address her immense childhood trauma in her work and her poetic use of materials, from drawing to monumental installations are haunting and humbling.
On what occasion do you lie?
To spare my children’s feelings.
What is your most treasured possession?
A letter from my late brother, the only one he ever wrote to me.
What do you do to help put you into your optimal creative space?
I need solitude, knowing that everyone is fed and looked after… then I turn up the volume and tune in.
What does your (physical) creative space look like?
It is an old mechanic’s workshop which we renovated with large metal windows overlooking a small green courtyard. An abundance of natural light and plants.
When creating what is your biggest frustration?
My process is slow and time-consuming, with endless layering – therefore I sometimes struggle to finish works. So instead of yielding to the process I can get frustrated due to the timeline. Having said that, I need deadlines for all my painting and sculptural projects.
Name a few quirks that others may not know about you?
I’m stubborn, persistent and I hate baking.
When you’re in your ultimate creative space what word would you use to describe the experience?
Timeless.
This is Elmarina
South African, age 33
Location Outside a house in Delft, Cape Town, South Africa
Feeding her three-year-old child
Photographed August 2018
Whenever you give a child a bottle [that contains formula], they get sicker, more quickly. It’s because you get moms who don’t close the bottles properly. Flies get attracted to them, and there are more germs.
I’ve got three children. I didn’t breastfeed the first two, the boys. I had very small nipples and it wasn’t easy for me. For the first week, my eldest did drink from my breasts, but he couldn’t really get a grip on the nipple because it was so small. And I used to struggle with him the whole time.
But when my girl here came along, my husband hadn’t had work for a few months, so we decided we were going try the breast again. I couldn’t afford to buy the formula that worked for my two boys. I told myself, “Now Elmarina, you have to think. You must rather put her on the breast or what are you going to do? There is no money for formula.” So I had to try, and just do it and even though it was painful, try not to panic. But I would panic sometimes because my daughter would cry you know, because the nipple was so small, nè[not so]? I went to the clinic to speak to one of the ladies who works there. She really tried to help me with technique.
It was still really, really hard to feed my daughter, and she is still underweight. I cried with that nurse, asking her to just help me try to figure something out, because I didn’t have the finances for the milk. She told me to come whenever I’m ready, like every day, I could go to her for help. She was a little old lady, but a very nice one. You know how older people are: They know how to explain things to you down to the last detail. That’s why I think she showed me those techniques with my finger. She knew about my situation, the money, that there wasno money to buy a breastfeeding pump, you understand.*I wish the hospitals or clinics would give us pumps, or pills to help with the milk. I have a friend who was offered help by the clinic in Bishops Lavis. She didn’t have milk but she really wanted to breastfeed and not put her child on a bottle, so they gave her pills [probably sulpiride, believed by some doctors to increase serum prolactin and aid milk supply]. But I didn’t get that in the hospital I was at. Nobody even asked me: Do you want a pill to help you breastfeed? Nothing like that. I had to find a way to breastfeed.
My daughter was born very small, so I was often at the clinic, trying to get her weight and her iron right the whole time. When she was two, the doctor said she could drink till she’s five. She loves it; she doesn’t want to give it up [laughs]. Sometimes I tease her and tell her that she’s getting too big now and she says, “No, no!” and shakes her head [laughs].
<sidebar note>
South African public hospitals do not supply mothers with breastfeeding pumps.
In 2019 I published my first book, Breastfeeding 101, which features candid portraits of 101 breastfeeding women as well their honest stories. In this blog post you see one of the mothers represented with her blurb from the book.
The idea for this book was unexpectedly sparked three years ago when I started seeing a lot of controversial social media content about breasts, nipples and breastfeeding.
Looking forward I hope my book can help normalise what is already a women’s most natural act. I would love to see the breastfeeding percentage rate in South Africa double. It came as a surprise to learn that, according to the 2018 statistics of the World Health Organisation (WHO), our country has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world.
Breastfeeding 101 features mothers from South Africa as well as around the globe and serves as a first-hand body of information – an unintentional handbook – directly from the women it captures.
Breastfeeding 101 is a book that wasn’t intended as a manual but may serve as one.
Basic info about the book:
Title: Breastfeeding 101
Publisher: Self-published via Staging Post
Format: Hardcover, 22 x 27cm, 224 pages
Price: ZAR385
Available for purchase via Exclusive Books, The Book Lounge and directly from the author.
This is Gugu Nonjinge
I photographed and met Gugu in March 2018. I documented her portrait for her feature in Destiny magazines’ Young Business Minds section with an article titled Mentoring Future Leaders. We did hair and makeup as well as the shoot at her offices in Cape Town.
