36 18 April 2020 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I subscribe 0330 333 1113
ALL IMAGES © GIDEON MENDEL
ÔW
hen I left South Africa for
London in 1990, I was
pretty burnt out. People
didn’t talk about post-
traumatic stress then. I had been through six
pretty intense years shooting in South Africa
seeing a lot of pretty distressing stuff. People
being killed, frightening and tough situations.
When I left, I took a load of fi les which I thought
were my most important. As a photographer
you have all kinds of shit lying around. When
you shoot transparencies, you clip out your best
pictures but what about the rest?’
What photographer and artist Gideon
Mendel did with the rest, along with some
colour negatives, was store them in a friend’s
garage in Johannesburg, the city where he was
born in 1959. At some point during the last 30
years, the top layers were damaged by rain.
When Gideon saw them, he wasn’t distraught.
Since 2007, while shooting his phenomenal
Drowning World reportage, an intimate
exploration of fl ood victims around the globe,
Gideon has collected an archive of fl ood-
damaged photos found in the street or fl oating
in water. ‘I was already very connected to the
impact water makes on photographic
emulsions, so the moment I saw the damaged
box, I thought this could be very interesting.’Damage
The images provide the fi rst of three sections,
‘Damage’, in his book, Freedom or Death. The
title is lifted from a protest banner in a
photograph by Gideon of the uncle of
Wellington Miles praying at a commemoration
meeting held on the day his nephew, an ANC
guerrilla, was hanged in July 1987. The images
from ‘Damage’ are from Gideon’s
documentation of the fi nal years of apartheid.
Scenes from this radioactive chapter of history
swirl among the mould and moisture on the
emulsion: black mourners stand graveside with
their fi sts raised, students demonstrate and
protest, a shack burns ferociously and riot
police dismantle a burning barricade. In
contrast, there are white students celebrating
at university, cheerleaders wielding pom poms
and a raucous crowd at a rugby cup match.
They provide a crucial record of how deeply
segregated the country was along racial lines.
The second section in the book, ‘The Stone,
the Gun and the Plate,’ is a collaboration withMarcelo Brodsky, an Argentinian artist known
for his human rights activism. Gideon met him
at a group show and a collaboration ensued.
He handed Marcelo some of his best-known
images along with the background information
and power to do as he wished. Four triptychs
were conceived that acknowledge an object
prevalent in Gideon’s photographs from the
1980s – the stone, tear gas, the wooden gun
and the sjambok (a menacing rubber whip).
The reworking of the images with text, bold
colours and often comic book style, intensifi es
the historical narrative of the subject matter.Merged
The third section of the book is ‘Merged.’ In
2019, while Gideon was incapacitated with
sciatica, he spent time trying to sort through
his archive and prints. ‘I’ve got a lot of old press
prints from the 1980s and ’90s. I found myself
increasingly fascinated by the backs – the
captions, the marks, the barcodes, each one
has its own history. I had this idea of bringing
the backs into the images and merging them.’
He scanned both sides in Photoshop, making
sure it was precise, resisting the urge to move
things around. They provide an insight into the
functionality of the prints and his time
working with photo agencies AFP, Magnum
and Network.
Is it diffi cult for Gideon to look back at the
images? ‘I had a lot of traumatic experiences
which I didn’t properly process. To some extent
it’s metaphorical – I’d probably packed them
away in boxes along with the images. Now, I
realise how what we do does affect us – in
some ways the experience of working through
that time very much marked me as a person
and a photographer. It’s an amazing
experience coming back to it, making this book
as a way of dealing with everything.’
Gideon is back on his feet, feeling energised
and ready to continue making important new
work. He’s recently returned from
documenting the aftermath of the bushfi res in
Australia. ‘I’ve just turned 60, and probably
have another ten good years of shooting left.
I’m starting to think of dedicating the rest of my
shooting career to working on climate change,
working my way through the elements – earth,
water, air and fi re – if any travel is possible, who
knows what will be happening in the
coming months or year.’Changes of state
Discovering a box of damaged negatives led to
Gideon Mendel revisiting and re-engaging with
his archives. He tells Peter Dench all about it
Photo Stories