peace and blessings be with you .
i am sitting at U&ME in long street and i was just thinking , how amazing that from a coffee shop in long street , cape town , south africa , i can share with people that i have met in , and people i am yet to meet all over the world. i had lunch with ebra and he reminded me that i said that i would join a photographers agency after i came back from pilgrimage …. i am still not too sure, it makes sense on many different levels , though there is something inside of me resisting….
the other amazing thing , and i should probably apologise to those of you who are accustomed to more ordered communication styles , is that i can almost randomly post images that “feel” right on any given day , so have a way to see how “coincidence” and “choice” come together over time , like a tapestry perhaps?
anyway , we all know why you are really here , so without any further ado …..
my first published work was for a magazine called “design indaba “, and i think you can still find it online if you have the time to kill…. i got that job standing in a queue at the movies on tuesday (the cheap ticket night) when i bumped into Michael stellenberg , a friend and in my opinion a seriously hot designer who asked me if i was interested in doing a photo-essay for this magazine that he worked for? that time i still shot film , slide film in fact , and crossed all of it , so i told him that if they paid for the film processing , i’d do it ! anyway , i did it , and i got the cover. the reason for this rather long winded story is that the second time my work was published , was for me , my entrance into the world where i felt okay being called a photographer, see , i started working for the mail&guardian , my favourite newspaper . the photo above was taken when they asked me to go out and capture south africans on holiday. if i remember correctly , these ladies are from gugulethu , an old suburb/township .
the above shot was taken at sunrise on the day i did my first job as assistant director. no one got paid that day, we helped out , pitched in to get xander’s music video for theba (the original social worker) shot in one day. mario , joseph , tofiq ,brevan and i cant remember if eeb was involved worked non stop well into the night , but we got it done. the video was screened on m-tv base a good couple of times. this shot was taken when we realised that we needed a ghetto blaster to actually get the words in sync , so started waking up theba’s friends and eventually survived. xander just had the launch of his book last night ” the status of greatness” , and will be launching his new cd this friday ./;.
one of the first times i got paid for taking photos was when i worked for stonehouse productions , doing story board stills for a documentary on slavery. i got to take the ferry to robben island a couple of times, and had the priveledge of being allowed to walk all over the island . this was the fence running around the perimeter of the prison building.
i would like to thank mr. adams for his constructive criticism , and jabs for reminding me of the time they thought i wanted tobreak into a bank with a trained pigeon!!!
in the meanwhile , i will endeavor to be more constant , even if it means the posts are a little shorter!
thanks to everyone taking the time to read this .
salaams
yasser.
Yasser Booley's Blog 