2018 

Sandton, Johannesburg 

The Contestation series began as a site investigation before ultimately producing an experiment for exhibition translating and re-creating interesting and unusual correlations within the surrounding Sandton context – the ‘richest square mile in Africa’. There are a variety of fascinating reciprocal dichotomies present in the everyday lived experience within the business district and Contestations aims to highlight these as a snapshot in time. 

The photographs were all taken from a range within 200m of the Sandton Gautrain station, but often face inwards and outward simultaneously, prioritising a distorted perspective of distance. Two mirrors were brought to site for the experiment of combining what was already there. One mirror was a square planar panel and was used to geometrically fold space combining perspectives, while the other mirror was a circular cylinder and utilized to bend and distort the context. Furthermore, the surrounding architecture of ‘glazed spills’ was also incorporated to capture existing reflections and refractions changing throughout the day.  

The photo essay also won runner up in the South African Cities Network 2018 Essay Competition. There is a full write up document to download from the above link properly explaining the project in more detail.