Page 25 - Cape-Camera-Jan-Feb-2022

Cape Camera January/February 2022

Winning images from January

Set subject: Cell Phone Street Photography

The judges for the first competition of the year were Peter Brandt from the Fish Hoek Photographic
Club (Set Subject) and Peter Hardcastle from the Swartland Photographic Club (Open Subject). It
attracted 95 entries of which 45 were in the Set subject, comments LESLEY PAROLIS.

Promotions
There were no promotions in November.

Entries in the monthly PSSA Competition were:

Keeping our city clean by Anna Engelhardt (Senior Entry) & Social distancing
by Lindsay Antonio (Junior Entry).

Below are the winners in the various categories together with the judge’s comments.

Set Subject

Winner PDI – Set (Beginner) The Flower Seller by Joyce Gold-
schmidt (21). This portrait has so much charm, one can’t help
being drawn in by the shy but delighted smile of the flower ven-
dor who, for the moment, has been asked to take centre stage.
Winner PDI – Set (Master) Keeping our city clean by Anna Engel- Once one has been drawn in, there is a lot of other information
hardt (27). While this photo undeniably benefits from the im- to delight - from the quotidian details of her occupation to the
pact value of someone else’s creative work (the excellent mural tones and colours and shapes that repeat and echo within the
of Madiba) – something we are taught not to do – it goes on to image.
combine it with a fascinating trio of street-sweepers in a way
that suggests new narrative possibilities. The result has an im- While the exposure and colours are spot on, the in-phone (over)
pact all of its own: the fact that the face and movement is on a processing has resulted in exaggerated smoothing of some de-
diagonal leading away helps to absorb the mural into the narra- tails resulting, in the case of the hands especially, in an unre-
tive, rather than letting it dominate. alistic ‘latexy’ finish. The only other area I would criticise is the
The trio offer such a wonderful range of emotional “gesture”, framing: I am sure it must have been difficult, when you con-
from the weariness of the shadow-hugging woman in the lead, sider the busy scene and how close the photographer was to
to the disinterested yet purposeful stride of the middle figure, the subject, but a different crop on the bottom hand and the
to the suspicious glare of the last man lagging momentarily to headless flower stems on the bottom left hand side would have
get a better view of the photographer, his face conveniently taken the photo up a notch.
spotlit by the sun.
While the Mandela face is an idealised representation of an
idealised memory, i.e. the “safe” (forgiving, generous of spirit) let down by this idealism. The contrasting threads of the nar-
leader for all South Africans going into the “new” South Africa, rative are further invigorated by the opposition between the
the sweepers belong to a contrasting realism rooted in the now, pastelly greys of the mural, and the bright bursts of colour on
from a demographic which, it can be argued, has mostly been the sweepers themselves.

Cape Town Photographic Society 24