The work is situated in Mpumalanga province, South Africa, on the escarpment bordering Mozambique and Eswatini. A place where lush cliffs abruptly pierce the hot, red earth of the lowlands. Itserves as a geo-physical symbol for the edge of the South African frontier. A collision point that has inspired countless folk tales and the beginnings of the modern-day story of gold in South Africa.
Today, plantations of foreign trees blanket the landscape while mills churn steam as they pulp pine into paper. In the valleys below, gold mines that have been chiming steel against rock for the past one hundred years ring their ceaseless chorus. The surrounding terrain is littered with relics of another time — the remnants of a forgotten pre-colonial society and wild descendants of horses abandoned during wars and a failed gold rush.
MAPALAKATA looks at the transient nature of ‘visitors’ to the landscape, drawing attention to how the history of the region is continually rewritten as different groups of people attempt to erase the narratives bound to their predecessors, each driven to occupy the space for the resources that it holds. This process leaves an archive of physical artefacts scattered across the landscape, which become ephemeral traces of the histories that have played out.
Through a photographic investigation of these remnants of the past and the people who presently inhabit these spaces, this work aims to engage with the nuances of present social conditions in South Africa and consider how place roots itself in the consciousness of those who inhabit it.
'The name Mapalakata once meant traders. Men who came inland with cloth and beads, their packs heavy with salt and brass. They followed the flow of rivers, trading what they could carry for gold and hides and grain. The world they moved through was a web of bargains. Even now the region works with the same logic.' Desmond Latham
The book includes written contributions from South African writers Lidudumalingani and Desmond Latham.
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About the special edition
Jacket "GENERAL SURFACE PLAN — MSAULI MINE (AFRICAN CHRYSOTHIL ASBESTOS), 1968"
Msauli Mine operated as a large-scale asbestos mine in the Makhonjwa mountains from 1948 to 2001, after which time the mine was deserted. The mining town was dismantled during Covid lockdowns when security staffwere pulled offthe site. Materials from the town and mining apparatus were extracted for scrap value or repurposed for building use in surrounding communities. Today nature has reclaimed its hold over the remaining buildings. This map was collected from the rubble when I photographed the site in 2020.
Print "MAKHONJWA, 2022"
The Makhonjwa mountains are a part of The Great Escarpment, which separates the high and lowlands of Southern Africa. They form a significant part of the Barberton Greenstone Belt — the unique and ancient geological formation on which MAPALAKATA is set. Some say these mountains were the first land to emerge from the waters before the time of continents. Deep beneath them are encased traces of the oldest known life on Earth.
Whilst driving back home from a relatively uneventful day in 2020, I saw a fire in the distance and shot a single frame with a new long lens that I hadn’t tested before. I was very surprised when I saw the negative, and I decided to look for more fires, but I could never quite be in the right place at the right time to capture one in the same way. Then, in late 2022, I was driving along a winding mountain pass when I saw smoke in the distance. Night was setting in, so I had to drive really quickly to get there in time and run down into the valley through a herd of cattle. I managed to find a good vantage point with just enough time to photograph the scene.
The fires weren’t initially interesting to me, but they ended up representing the themes of rebirth, and the land continually rewriting its own story. The fact that “Makhonjwa, 2020” and “Makhonjwa, 2022” were both made in different areas and in different years, yet can sit side by side in the book and look like a single pan of the same valley, was felt grounded in those themes.
