Andre Swart
Photographer

English
isiZulu
English
A street performer hangs upside down above a horizon of masked figures, one and a half metres apart. A gull floats over an abandoned pier and boardless surf. Life cautiously greets a void, bustling on any other day. MARS ominously etched onto a gritty stonescape. This is the view of South African documentary photographer Andre Swart during the Covid-19 Lockdown of 2020. While Durban negotiates a new set of norms, Swart spends time on the promenade – perhaps the city’s only attempt at true diversity – making sense of a new world through his viewfinder. Dramatic, monochrome and cinematic, Swart shares an aesthetic with the likes of Winogrand and Frank. An aesthetic that is honed, moments stalked, dragging raw emotion through a metal box. This is painstaking poetry. The work is brilliantly suspended in an antithesis of movement, rhythm, flight, acrobatics; all during a period of unsettling pause. Swart moves with his subjects, rendering himself invisible in the image-making process, as the viewer enters the frame.
isiZulu
Umdlali wasemgwaqweni ulenga ebheke phansi ngaphezu komkhathi wezithombe ezifihle ubuso, uqhelelane ngemitha elilodwa nengxenye. Inyoni yasolwandle phecelezi(gull) intanta phezu komgodi oshiywe dengwane kanye ne-surf engenabhodi. Lokhu lisho njalo igebe empilweni, kuyaphithizela njengezinye izinsuku. I-MARS igxishwe ngendlela esabekayo endaweni eyitshe. Lona umbono womthwebuli wezithombe waseNingizimu Afrika u-Andre Swart ngesikhathi sokhuvethe(Covid-19) kuvaliwe izwe ngonyaka wezi-2020. Ngenkathi iTheku lixoxisana ngoluhla olusha lwezinkambiso, u-Swart uchitha isikhathi ekuzulazuleni – mhlawumbe okuwukuphela komzamo wedolobha wokuhlukahluka kweqiniso – okwenza umqondo ngomhlaba omusha, ngesitholi sakhe sokubuka. Ubuncweti bokuveza imidlalo, izithombe ezakhiwe ngombala omnyama nomhlophe noma ngamathoni ahlukene ombala owodwa kuphela; nebhayisikobho, u-Swart wabelana ngobuhle nokuthandwa kuka-Winogrand no-Frank. Ubuhle okwahlonishwa, izikhathi ezilandelwayo, obunamandla futhi kunzima nokulawula. Lezi izinkondlo ezibuhlungu. Lomsebenzi umiswe ngokuhlanekezela, isigqi, indiza, umgilingo; konke ngesikhathi sokuphumula okungahambi kahle. U-Swart uhamba nezihloko zakhe, ezenza, angabonakali emsebenzini yokwenza izithombe, njengoba umbukeli engena kuhlaka.
Paulo Menezes