I haven’t shot documentary for quite sometime, over a year in fact. As I’m wont to do, I came to Africa, armed with preconceptions. And of course, eventually when I got out of my own way, they went out the window. It may be something to do with the light here.

The first week I was here, I had difficulty connecting to Africa. I think it had something to do with the weather. Every day it was grey and it rained, or thought about raining, or had just finished raining and was preparing for the next bout of rain. While the temperature was warm, the constant rain and soft greyness reminded me of being back home. Somehow the light wasn’t really Africa. I wasn’t what I remembered.

Then it all changed. The sun came out, mother Africa put on her party frock and a big smile and everything was different.

We went out last Sunday, looking for places and people to photograph. The Road took us North through the mountains, and being a trip for the purpose of photography, it took us all afternoon to go nowhere at all. But my Africa-itiswere starting to return. It had something to do with the sunshine, the light and the music in my head. The night before, I was having dinner with dinner with Marthinus, when he put some music on, South African band Freshly Ground’s Nomvula. You can hear it here. Listening to it, I started to feel back in Africa, and the first touches of Africa-itis getting to me. It’s amazing how songs can do that, how they can attract the feathers of memory and clutch them close.

Then Sunday came. We didn’t go far that afternoon, probably only a few kilometres, and we ended up at a roadside whistle-stop called Simondium. A service station, a superette (read: roadside dairy, complete with security bars and blast proof doors). For a time we  photographed the vineyard across the road, then we turned to leave, and I saw it. The wonderfully rich plum-red light which proceeds sunsets in Africa, a mixture of red and orange and purple and a subtle smokiness which I have never seen anywhere else. People were wandering along the edge of the road heading to and from the shop, seemingly with little else to do. The combination of the light, and the dust and the atmosphere and the languid movement of people hit home. At that point Africa really sank her teeth in.

A young couple came out of the shop, and when I asked him if I could photograph them, they were happy enough to oblige. Without asking mewhy, they moved over to the wall, and posed for me. Their names were Alicia and Jenovan, or so they told me, but little else.. Somehow the rich ruby coloured light seemed fitting for what was obviously a close relationship.

daybreakers the movie

But Africa is not just the rich warmth of sunset. The bright light of noonday can contain a wonderfully smoky blue quality, a glittering and soft edged steely quality which is easy to overlook. We made the trip down the Cape to the south-western tip of Africa, a drive of a couple of hours, and joined the hordes of tourists clamouring up the last stretch to the lighthouse. From Cape Point you get a brilliant vista which circles from Table Mountain all the way around across False Bay to the Cape of Good Hope. But the day was warm and the tourists were thick and buzzing noisily. By the time I got up to the lighthouse, the din of excited voices and self-absorbed conversations made it hard to concentrate on the scenery. So I gave up, and photographed the tourists photographing the tourists. Somehow the strong daylight clearly delineated the whole surreal event and pointed its finger at  the consumerist nature of the tourism industry. .

Cape Town may have a population of 3.7 million people, but it has an extraordinary diversity of cultures, in small remarkably different precincts. Bo Kaap has to be one of the jewels in Cape Town’s tourist portfolio. Fortunately most of the tour buses haven’t caught up with it yet. The houses were built very early in Cape Town’s history to house the Malay slaves, most of whom were Moslem. These days I’m told it’s politically incorrect to call it the Malay Quarter, so it has been renamed to Bo Kaap, or Upper Town. Photographing it is a colour photographer’s wildest dream. The houses are painted in a riotous array of bright and primary colours. Purples, pinks, reads, blues; there are all represented somewhere. Then there are the people; headscarves, burkhas, and wandering imans with leather satchels and long flowing beards. It’s all there to be photographed, the need to brightly painted houses, the spotless streets, and the light. Always the light. And the hard morning sunlight, the shadows become compositional elements in their own right, sometimes dominating the bright pastels and primaries of the buildings. No need for the saturation slider here. But while the buildings dominated, there was always some evidence of human occupation; a half open doorway where you sensed somebody was standing in the shadows, just out of view, keeping a watching eye, or the man up the side street, carefully waxing his much loved but ageing Nissan Skyline, who stopped and nodded curtly as I passed. No beggars, no mess. Just the odd resident, bands of workmen, and a few passing tourists. And all the time the intense colours of the houses, hundreds of years old but still lovingly cared for.

Visiting Africa is a bit like putting together one of those thousand-piece jigsaws. You arrive knowing nothing, but bit by bit, day by day, you gather a piece at a time and began to assemble a picture of the inscrutable creature that is Africa.

I’m told you shouldn’t expect to even contemplate achieving it in a single lifetime.