Workshop

It’s sobering. It warps the rules of time and shared space. It forces me to take a long, unflinching look at my life and recall that, on any given day of my own 17th year, chances are I was bunking law school to spend an afternoon on Camps Bay beach.

Seventeen is going to be a great photographer.

With the flexibility of homeschooling, a DSLR camera and a dream, they’re already raking in that matric farewell cash which they plan to add to their university fund when not training for a 300-kilometre cycling event.

When we workshop our attempts at environmental portraiture, Seventeen doesn’t come to play, and neither does Nineteen.

The latter is taking a gap year, which they state a little self-consciously, yet their bold, self-assured portraits are already angled towards a magazine cover.

Nineteen plans to study something “sensible” in Cape Town next year, and I want to warn them to stay away from Camps Bay.

Instead, one sunny afternoon, as we dart around Penduka Village on assignment, trying to capture the essence of the place and take each other’s portraits, I look around at this year’s Reframe collective and feel the thrill of learning and of community.

What we all have in common is our appreciation of photography.

The 14-strong cohort is diverse in terms of age, background, visual style and personal motivation, but the willingness to invest a month of our lives to study documentary photography and environmental portraits, culminating in the group exhibition of ‘Home of Mine’ at Café Prestige on 1 December is shared.

As we spend the week learning about revelations (at least to me) such as aperture, shutter speed and ISO, I realise I’ve been winging it.

Over the last decade, I’ve had photographs published in group exhibitions, newspapers and magazines – both at home and abroad – but to learn from the talented participants, to talk about photography, to go out on assignment and to produce this group exhibition is to know you’re never too old, too established, too good or too experienced to learn.

I’m loving it.

Beyond the technical substance of the workshop, the Gen Z kids introduce me to amazing YouTube channels and new artists, and give me hope for Namibia’s creative future.

The millennials, some of them the photographers and journalists hosting the workshop, nudge me towards the awareness that, I, a fellow millennial, could be organising something similar with regard to narrative journalism, arts, travel, social justice or column writing.

Incredibly, this detailed and empowering workshop is free.

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