Ian van Coller

OUTSIDE LOOKING IN: Portraits of Domestic Workers in South Africa

May 1 - June 30, 2009

Much has been made of a burgeoning “post-racial” era in America since the nomination and election of Barak Obama. In my home country of South Africa, the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994—the first election of a black South African by a black majority newly armed with voting rights—heralded similar speculation about a “post-Apartheid era.” Today, South Africa has adopted what is arguably the world’s most progressive constitution, and touts the largest proportion of women to serve in a national parliament anywhere in the world. Yet, in contrast to the adoption of these democratic ideologies, the daily existence of the majority of its population remains largely unchanged. What is the impact of these historic political victories….? Outside Looking In reflects the persistent fault line between national democratic ideals and ongoing racial and economic inequalities that, in South Africa, circumscribe the lived experiences of a large majority of its black citizens more than a decade after apartheid’s end.

South Africa has one of the highest rates of unemployed workers in the world, the majority of who are black South Africans that are lacking in both education and opportunity, and are living in extreme poverty. Those who are fortunate find work as a “domestic”—a gardener, nanny or maid—within wealthy and middle-class households. Today, more than 1.5 million black South Africans continue to serve as domestic workers, many of whom live in on-site quarters, and effectively reproduce an ongoing “social apartheid.” On a daily basis, the domestic worker/employer relationship reproduces racial and economic inequalities within the most intimate of spaces—the household. More than a decade after the election of Nelson Mandela, domestic service remains so entrenched in South African culture that to an outsider, it is noticeably absent from public discourse on equality and race.

Outside Looking In is a compilation of portraits from two series: Interior Relations: Portraits of Female Domestic Workers (Part I), and The Garden Path, which focused on the male landscapers and gardeners. My own experiences as an expatriate South African, raised with black nannies and gardeners, provides me with a personal (and yet distant) vantage point from which to view the persistence of domestic service. This portrait series has been an exploration of the complicated and intimate relationships between employers and domestics, which are interwoven with intimacy, inequity, nostalgia, and the struggle to create and assert post-apartheid identities in the face of persistent inequalities. The institution of domestic service, so engrained in South African culture, also provides an opportunity for an unusual level of intimacy and understanding that can bridge enormous gulfs in ethnicity, culture, education and poverty.

With the help of a local assistant Phinneas Ndlovu, I was also able to collect brief oral histories of the women and men I photographed. Most of the women are single (widowed, divorced, separated, never married) and support numerous children, and often extended families, on their meager salaries. These women, often with the assistance of their employers, are paying for their children’s advanced educations, which will ultimately allow the next generation a realistic opportunity work alongside white South Africans.

Both parts of this portrait series capture images of domestic workers photographed within the homes or gardens that they service, and often reside. The images provide a space for these men and women to assert their own identities, juxtaposed within settings where they normally have had to conform to their employers expectations regarding manner and dress. For this project, the subjects were asked to wear their preferred clothing and accessories so that they could express some aspects of their personal aesthetics and identity.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Ian van Coller is an artist and photographer who grew up in apartheid era South Africa. After receiving a National Diploma in Photography in 1991 from Technikon Natal in Durban, van Coller moved to Arizona in the southwest of the United States. He spent nine years in Tempe where he completed his BFA degree in Photography (from Arizona State University) and worked for 5 years as a photogravure collaborative printer and partner at Segura Publishing, a small fine art printing company in Tempe (www.segura.com). In 2000 Van Coller moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico where he received his MFA in photography from the University of New Mexico. He currently lives in Bozeman, Montana where he is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Montana State University. Van Coller returns to South Africa every year to work on art and photography projects. His work has been widely exhibited in the United States and South Africa where his work is included in many museum collections including The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Fogg Museum, The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and The South African National Gallery (IZIKO). https://www.ianvancoller.com/