Dikeledi Jeanette Kekakna by Ian van Coller

Tuesday - a busy day. Allow me to pass the mic to today's aspiring Hot Shot, Ian van Coller. Ian...

This project focuses on the intersection of post-apartheid black and white identities via photographic portraiture and oral recording of black domestic workers. There are more than 1.5 million black South Africans, primarily women, who still serve as maids and nannies in white households. Although these domestics and their employers remain separated by an enormous gulf in race, culture, education and poverty that characterizes much of South Africa today, they are often wedded by an intensely intimate, personal, and awkward interdependence. In this project, my intent is to capture some of the complexities that all South Africans face in creating and asserting post-Apartheid identities in the face of dramatic economic and cultural realities. The women in this portrait series were photographed in the homes where they are employed. They were asked to choose their own dress and posture as a means to express their identity within that environment, and became active participants in the construction of these images.

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