{"id":9808,"date":"2011-11-24T15:19:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-24T11:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/?p=9808"},"modified":"2024-12-27T03:09:55","modified_gmt":"2024-12-26T23:09:55","slug":"iron-africa-industrial-photography-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/iron-africa-industrial-photography-exhibition\/","title":{"rendered":"IRON AFRICA: An Unconventional Industrial Photography Exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Against everyone\u2019s expectations, in South Africa, I didn\u2019t take a single photo of Kruger Park. The best wildlife I could photograph, given my patience level, would have been animals\u2019 rear ends disappearing into the horizon. Then how on Earth did I win the African division of the International Photo Contest?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">&#8220;Anti-Safari&#8221; Still Lives<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">In my first days in South Africa, I grabbed my Nikon and jumped into my husband\u2019s car when he was visiting a few mines for his business. I gave their engineers and workers quite the surprise by photographing their dusty, oily interiors\u2014not to mention the biggest surprise I gave myself. Soon, I somehow came across an email about an international photo contest, named my series&nbsp;IRON AFRICA,&nbsp;and sent them a couple of my &#8216;anti-safari&#8217; still lives. That\u2019s how I ended up winning the African chapter of the Alliance De France International Photo Contest and being offered a personal exhibition in Pretoria, sponsored by Bojole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Iron Africa. The mining beauty of South Africa\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1PPQuCkNYxE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Pictures Framed With Recycling Scrub<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>On the day of the exhibition opening, I swung by my favorite fruit and veggie shop and asked for 40 cardboard boxes. Surprise-surprise, it wasn\u2019t easy explaining why I needed their trash. Obviously, to frame my photos. At a mining company workshop, I scavenged some old chains. Surprise-surprise again, it wasn\u2019t easy explaining why I needed their scrap either. Clearly, to hang my soon-to-be &#8220;framed\u201d pictures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then I picked up a kid\u2019s no-brush paint set. An hour later\u2014just a couple of hours before the opening party\u2014I was sitting on the grass in the Alliance Fran\u00e7aise front yard, painting boxes with both hands. When the photos were finally stuck to the painted boxes, and the boxes hung from the chains, the crew installed the whole contraption on the walls and ceiling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It looked\u2026 well, let\u2019s say unique. I just forgot one minor detail: price tags. \u201cAt least it was fun,\u201d said the organizers. For Pretoria, 300 people at the opening party was practically a sold-out crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Sold-Out Rusty Junk<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Not sure what amazed South Africa\u2019s Big Five enthusiasts more\u2014the subject of my photos (basically rusty junk) or the fact that they were framed in painted fruit boxes dangling from iron chains. Probably both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here\u2019s an article from the&nbsp;<em>Kormorant<\/em>&nbsp;newspaper covering the opening party. Not long after, my Nikon was stolen along with some promising shots of an old port near Cape Town, intended for my next exhibition. I never replaced the camera\u2014too bulky to lug around anyway. Instead, I bought a ticket JNB-JFK and hiked the Appalachian Trail. Then rode my bike on Route 66 and a lot more https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/brave\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/category\/here-i-go\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(updated on 2024)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>PS: I lost these images when transitioning from PC to Mac, but the thumbnails miraculously survived. To make sure I didn\u2019t lose them again, I turned them into this video. Had to apply some filters to cover up the pixels, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"818\" src=\"http:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/kormorant_02December10_15-copy-21-1024x818.jpg\" alt=\"kormorant_02December10_15 copy 2\" class=\"wp-image-1101\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/kormorant_02December10_15-copy-21-1024x818.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/kormorant_02December10_15-copy-21-150x120.jpg 150w, https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/kormorant_02December10_15-copy-21-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/kormorant_02December10_15-copy-21-370x295.jpg 370w, https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/kormorant_02December10_15-copy-21-770x615.jpg 770w, https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/kormorant_02December10_15-copy-21.jpg 1533w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Against everyone\u2019s expectations, in South Africa, I didn\u2019t take a single photo of Kruger Park. The best wildlife I could photograph, given my patience level, would have been animals\u2019 rear ends disappearing into the horizon. Then how on Earth did I win the African division of the International Photo Contest?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":486,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[480],"tags":[815],"class_list":["post-9808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sa-life","tag-exhibitions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9808"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9904,"href":"https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9808\/revisions\/9904"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenafaber.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}