Paul Weinberg
Paul Weinberg is a South African born photographer with a strong commitment to the land and its people. He was a founder member of Afrapix photographic agency which was well known for its uncompromising stand and visual portrayal of the apartheid system and the resistance to it and South Photo, a family of documentary photographers.
Weinberg has a large body of work that explores people, life, culture and environment around him, beyond the news and beyond the headlines. His work has often been against the traffic challenging stereotypes, prevailing comfortable myths and himself as in the case of his own portrait of his home town, Pietermaritzburg (Going Home, 1985-90).
His work on indigenous people and related issues has often taken him years to complete, living with people for months at a time. In Search of the San was a long and in depth documentation about the lives of the modern San living in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. He has spent the last 23 years involved in this project living and reflecting on their modern day existence. The outcome of these efforts resulted in a number of exhibitions locally and internationally and two books (In Search of the San, Once We Were Hunters) and a contributor to others – Bushmen Art and Voices of the San. His work with the Kosi Bay community, at the time under threat of removal by the apartheid government and the local conservation authorities developed into a three year relationship and exhibition for which he received the Mother Jones Documentary Award. His work Once We Were Hunters, explores how indigenous people in Africa relate to their environment, conservation and tourism in challenging times. In the last number of years he completed a book on his own city Durban, Travelling Light a kind of retrospective of his life’s work and Moving Spirit is his latest project which is on spirituality in Southern Africa.
He was a co-editor and photographer for the book Beyond the Barricades, Aperture 1989.
He continues to work as a photojournalist, documentary photographer, occasional filmmaker and writer exploring issues and themes and telling stories of his country and his continent. He is presently Senior Curator at the Center for Curating the Archive, Michaelis Fine Arts School, University of Cape Town.
Published books include:
Shaken Roots, about the San of Namibia (EDA 1990) text by Megan Biesele
Back to the Land, (Porcupine Press 1996) about the return to aboriginal land by displaced South African communities, text Marlene Winberg
An End to Waiting (IEC), a document of South Africa's first democratic elections (1994)
In Search of the San (Porcupine Press 1997), a book about the San of Today in southern Africa
Once We Were Hunters (Mets and Schilt, David Phillip 2000), a journey with indigenous people in southern and eastern Africa
Durban, Impressions of an African City (Porcupine Press2002)
Travelling Light (UKZN press, 2004)
Moving Sprit (Double Storey, Mets and Schilt, 2006)
The documentary films he has made are:
Part of the Process (1981), a film about the removal of Pageview community
Dark City (1980) a film about Alexndra Township, Dancing for God (2000), about the annual Shembe pilgrimage
Trancing in Dreamtime (with Junaid Ahmed, (2004), a unique meeting between San and Aboriginal musicians
Double Vision (with Karen Shapiro, 2005) about the South African diaspora in North Carolina, USA.
Qualifications:
Matric – Alexandra Boys High, Pietermaritzburg (1973)
Certificate in Photogrpahy Technikon, Natal (1977)
BA UKZN (political Science and Economic Hisotry, 1978)
MALS degree, Duke University (2004/5)
