Helping the Healing

Physiotherapy in Grey’s Hospital, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

Photos, John Robinson.

Helping the Healing. The physiotherapy department of Grey’s Hospital plays a part of a multidisciplinary healthcare in the care of both hospitalised and outpatients in this health facility. Grey’s Hospital is is a public tertiary health facility of the South African department of health. The hospital serves the greater western area of the KwaZulu-Natal province on the eastern seaboard of South Africa.

Available for image use and publication via Zumapress.com

Urbanscapes

Aspects of Pietermaritzburg

Photos, John Robinson.

Pietermaritzburg is not a perfect city by any standards, it is located in a geographical bowl straddling the Msunduzi River, it is a juxtaposition of many people and things. A city that many people just pass on their way to and from the cities of Durban and Johannesburg on the bisecting N3 highway.

A Space That Was

Two Abattoir Road


Photos, John Robinson.

Two Abattoir Road is in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. It is like many places in this city, it has a past. When it was built it was a bus depot for the city’s segregated transport department. It was then a home for some of the city’s Aids affected and infected children. After that it was a private Christian school and safe space during the pandemic. It has been cleared out to make a place for the homeless people on the streets of the city of Pietermaritzburg. These pictures were taken during a two week period while the building was being cleared out for its new purpose.



Praying, Hands and a Gun.

Tent revival meeting on the eve of the year 2000

Photos John Robinson

Tented revival meetings are a staple of the worldwide Christian evangelical movement. Amid the fears of general collapse on the eve of the year 2000, many churches in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa gathered together to see the new year in whatever it held for them…

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Ghraham B.

HIV positive

Photos, John Robinson 

In 2001, Ghraham B and many other HIV+ people in South Africa did not have access to Antiretroviral drugs to manage his condition. Instead, Ghraham B used his job as a hairdresser, ballroom dancing lessons with a dance partner, meditation and stress relief techniques in a support group for HIV+ people meeting at a Johannesburg shul. Ghraham B also used alternative remedies for his condition.

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Fight Club, MMA fighting…

Photos John Robinson

Fight Club, 11 May 2003, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
High kicks and punches smack into bodies as these fighters compete.
The seconds shout instructions to their fighters.
The fancy outfits that clothed their men on that walk from the change rooms count for nought once the fight begins.
Only hard kicks, punches and submissions will stop the other man.
The meek might gain the world, but in here only the hardest man will get the purse.

Camera & Coffee Sessions, Small Cameras

SINDI ZILWA
SINDI ZILWA Photo John Robinson

When Any Camera Intrudes Into a Person’s Space that Person Becomes Normative or in Other Words, Adopts a Pose That They Feel Is the Right Way for Them to be Perceived

Order coffees.

Unless you take out your camera in front of an inanimate object or a person without any prior knowledge of cameras and photography there will be a change in your subject when they realize they are being photographed. The photographer has always hankered for invisibility.

When any camera intrudes into a person’s space that person becomes normative or in other words adopts a pose that they feel is the right way for them to be perceived by the photographer at hand. Big setups like those with a camera on a tripod and studio lights will give off a more formal feel from the subject while small cameras and less of a studio setup will give off a more informal feel from the subject at hand. In both situations, the intervention of more of the joint humanness shared by both the subject and photographer can lessen the normative behaviour of the person or people photographed.

If the photographer comes away from behind the camera body by using a waist-level viewfinder and or engages more with the subject, the subject will in turn relax and give more of their spirit to the resulting photographic images.

The subject too must be able to trust the photographer to give of their self into the same resulting photographs.

Drink some coffee.

When photography was born, the early cameras were bulky and very noticeable. The image through the lens was transferred onto a large sheet of glass and from this glass plate, a contact print was made. Candid photography was not generally possible. It was only with the start of production of the small rangefinder camera in 1932 and later SLR cameras that it was possible for the photographer to focus accurately and fast candid photography with a small camera was also born.

With the advent of digital photography, the world is awash with the photographic images of everybody and all their neighbours too. The days of many people feeling the need for the services of a person who understood the art of photography are largely over. Everyone now thinks that they are a photographer in their own right. In this wash of people taking pictures of themselves and their friends, the narrative photographer can at last hide in plain sight. The photographer can be invisible in plain sight in this wash of image takers while continuing documenting life as he or she uniquely perceives.

The Leica M6 camera is a small analogue rangefinder camera, it is what I use for most of my personal photographic work. The Leica M6 is a small quiet rangefinder camera and in many ways, it is just like the first rangefinder cameras of 1932 which could be used without much attention called to its self unlike the bulky cameras of those times.

Alongside my Leica M6, I am now starting to use my iPhone 6 phone camera for some of my personal work too.

With the wash of many people taking selfies with mobile phone cameras in public places, I have found out that I can use my mobile phone camera for street photography with drawing close to zero attention to myself while doing my stuff as a narrative photographer.

In many ways, the modern mobile phone camera is the Leica M camera of its day. My iPhone 6 camera is hiding in plain sight in the midst of all the other mobile phone cameras clicking round about…

If you like what you have seen and read here, you can always buy me a $3.00 coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/JohnRobinson or PayPal.Me/jrphotographer

#Dialogue…

IPJR
NELSON MANDELA ATTENDS A REUNION OF HIS WITS UNIVERSITY LAW CLASS. 1996 WITS UNIVERSITY JOHANNESBURG SOUTH AFRICA PHOTO/JOHN ROBINSON

One goal Of dialogue Among Cultures And Civilisations Is To Recognise And To Understand Not Only Cultures And Civilisations Of Others, But Those Of “One’s Own.” We could know ourselves by taking a step away from ourselves and embarking on a journey away from self and homeland and eventually attaining a more profound appreciation of our true identity.

It is only through immersion into another existential dimension that we could attain mediated and acquired knowledge of ourselves in addition to the immediate and direct knowledge that we commonly possess. Through seeing others we attain a hitherto impossible knowledge of ourselves. – Mohammad Khatami, former president of Iran. (pp 267) Reconciliation, Pocket Books, London.

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On Instagram Ingagement

Public Space

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Photos John Robinson

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