TITLE: Unmade

Most things in all cities are in various states of decay. Even the most sturdy-seeming infrastructure will crumble without on going maintenance and meticulous care. Many objects look beautiful as they are gradually unmade. While walking I started noticing vignettes – usually something like a decaying piece of wood, leaning against a wall – that bore remarkable likeness to artworks by Rothko, Rauschenberg, Orozco or Twombly. I started to wonder what an urban aesthetic from the global South could say back to this canon. Shot in black and white, Unmade is a series of compositional experiments or conceptual and spatial epithets that disrupt the journey towards the decay of the discarded.

AUTHOR: Benjamin Haskins (South Africa)

For the last 15 years I have been involved in post-production of documentary films, music videos, brand films and narrative-based short video stories. Around 5 years ago, I started walking the city with my camera during my lunch breaks.

For some time I had been noticing repetitive traces left in and on the urban fabric. The
recurring patterns started emerging as an urban lexicon that I felt compelled to capture.
What started out as fascinations, resulted in a carefully collected set of vignettes, telling
stories of the city largely invisible to passers-by.
I have dedicated an increasing portion of time to combing pavements for smatterings of seemingly invisible cityness. For me, an aesthetic of contemporary African cityness is rendered visible in the unlikeliest of spaces and situations, but when revealed, can alter perceptions of time, places and spaces.

My photography is not only about documentation. It is also about exploring the visual language of the city: a language that is replete with nuance and humour and always in a constant state of flux.