Notes

The title of this series is Glimpses of the Fifties and Sixties. I have chosen to work in the style to which I have become accustomed (collage) and to also explore my printing via the photogravure process. I think one of the reasons I like this process is that it has an element of collage in it, but the process is more physically involved and delicate. It entails digitising an initial collage and working through at least five plates before even considering the trial print to be used for the series. I sourced material from the Drum magazine archives and I also looked through my own family albums. The use of my own archive was important because I wanted to reflect an intimacy and a familiarity that would make the images accessible. Looking through the albums I reminisced about growing up in my grandmother’s house and how I always found the dining room with the wedding photograph so intriguing. I also recalled enjoying a softball match in Westonaria (a small mining community on the West Rand) amidst the many dompas and curfew laws. Today these images have now been revived in the music videos of Mafikizolo and the ‘Stoned Cherry’ fashion label. I think I’m lucky in the sense that I have used art as an outlet for the frustrations I encountered during this time. My visual expression through painting was therapeutic and has now been transformed into what I believe to be a historical retrospective.

– Sam Nhlengethwa

1/30 Near the Bus Stop
2/30 Azikhwelwa
3/30 Sharpeville Massacre
4/30 The End of Kofifi
5/30 Stop it Verwoerd
6/30 Protests
7/30 A Tired Miner
8/30 Miners Showering
9/30 Humiliation
10/30 Compounds
11/30 The Shebeen
12/30 While We Were Young I
13/30 Pass Raid
14/30 Whites Only Area
15/30 Migrant Labourers
16/30 Gumboot Dance
17/30 Colleagues
18/30 Part Time Job I
19/30 Underground
20/30 While We Were Young II
21/30 While We Were Young III
22/30 Candlelit Studying
23/30 Skipping
24/30 The Grinding Stone
25/30 Pay Day
26/30 Hard at Work II
27/30 Part Time Job II
28/30 Coal Shed
29/30 Mbombela
30/30 Hard at Work I

Literature

Various Authors (2019) Leeto: A Sam Nhlengethwa Print Retrospective, Johannesburg: Goodman Gallery, published to coincide with the exhibition: Leeto: A Sam Nhlengethwa Print Retrospective, other impressions illustrated in colour on pages 34 to 43, 48, 49 to 54, 62 and 63.