Camera obscura

While in Grahamstown, I took some of my family to the Observatory Museum. Its Victorian camera obscura is the only one of its type in the southern hemisphere and one of only two in the world (the other being in Edinburgh).

A camera obscura is an optical device which predates the camera. The name originates in Latin and refers to a darkened room: camera means “vaulted chamber or room” and obscura means “dark”.

The museum was originally a nineteenth century jeweller’s shop and family home. The original owner and designer of this unusual building, Henry Carter Galpin, was a successful watchmaker and jeweller who constructed the camera obscura in 1882. He was interested in natural history, music, mechanics, astronomy and optics. The museum also includes a Meridian Room where Galpin could ascertain the precise time of local noon (14 minutes behind South African standard time) and a Telescope Room which contains the telescope which was originally installed in the rooftop observatory.

We climbed up a long and very narrow spiral staircase in the highest tower to reach the camera obscura. It works through a system of lenses and a mirror in a revolving turret in its roof and projects a panorama of the city onto a concave viewing surface in the darkened observation room beneath.

It’s fascinating and our guide was knowledgeable and friendly (though the building itself looks in need of maintenance).

This photograph of the image in the camera obscura is not as clear as the image itself. And had it been a sunnier day the image would have been even sharper.

Once locals would set their watches by the time on the clock tower but the clock is no longer working and these days each clock face seems to show a different time..!

You can find out more about the Observatory Museum at http://www.grahamstown.co.za and on Wikipedia.

Back in Bathurst Street

I can’t remember the last time I was in Grahamstown but I went back last week – just for a day – a very cold and windy day..!

But I got a photo of the same view of Bathurst Street that I sketched as an art student years ago.

It was so familiar but of course it’s changed. The building on the corner had been damaged in a fire and had to be restored, and (looking back at my sketch) I noticed the lamp post is gone. And I don’t think that red letterbox was there before – I didn’t include it in my sketch anyway.


But Birch's, the outfitters I'd sat outside sketching, was still there, selling menswear, school uniforms and university robes (for the last 148 years!).

And it was great to see that row of buildings on Bathurst Street still looking clean and bright, and in pretty good condition. And to go back...

Bathurst Street

Birch's

You can see my sketch here: http://daydreamdraggingfeet.blogspot.com/2012/05/down-bathurst-street.html

Gardens

As the rain pelted down today and the wind gusted up, I stood at the window with my mug of coffee and thought I’d finally have to accept that winter was on its way. But when the rain and wind died down, the birds piped up and the squirrels dashed between the puddles under the trees.

And the garden was dripping and fresh.

Last summer I went a few times to one of my favourite places in Cape Town: the Company’s Garden. The garden was established in 1652 by Dutch settlers to provide fresh produce for the Dutch spice-trading ships en route to South Asia. It originally comprised a number of rectangular fields and open irrigation furrows but grew into a well-known botanical garden.

There are many landmarks around the Company’s Garden, including the Houses of Parliament and Tuynhuys (‘Garden House’ in Dutch and the president’s Cape Town office), the Slave Lodge, St George’s Cathedral and the South African National Gallery (SANG).

It’s lovely just to wander through the garden and along the central walkway, the Avenue. It always seems to be green and shady. There’s much to see, including a rose garden, an aviary and a fish pond. The Garden Tea Room has become a favourite with tour groups but, on a summery day, there are still plenty of locals on every bench and lawn, and great people-watching. And there are always lots of birds and very inquisitive – and cheeky! – squirrels...

Egyptian Geese near the SANG

Mark O’Donovan’s interactive mixed media sculpture ‘Man Running from Lion’ (1997/2005?) 

outside the SANG (You turn a wheel near the base to make the figures move)

The South African National Gallery (SANG)

More about the SANG: http://www.iziko.org.za/museums/south-african-national-gallery

And about the Slave Lodge: http://www.iziko.org.za/museums/slave-lodge

Through another lens

These photographs were taken at the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute) in Paris. It was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and completed in 1987 – which makes this year its 25^th anniversary.

Established by the French government in collaboration with eighteen countries in the Arab League, it showcases the culture and heritage of the Arab world, as well as promotes research and co-operation, especially in science and technology, with France. It includes a museum, library and auditorium.

Its south facade is a metallic screen of geometric motifs. These motifs consist of thousands of apertures or light-sensitive mechanical devices which open and close, regulating the amount of light entering the building. They act as a brise soleil (or sun shading device) by controlling the amount of light entering the building and create an effect reminiscent of the mashrabiyya (latticework, usually carved out of wood, which encloses balconies or covers windows) of traditional Islamic architecture. (A pity that this system seems to no longer actually be working – but it’s still very beautiful.)

The institute is now focusing on both Islamic and pre-Islamic heritage to highlight diversity in the region.

This year I’m embarking on some research into Islamic education so perhaps it was serendipitous that I came across these old photos because I’m hoping that my reading and research will be like another lens through which I can view my own world as well as others.

Inside the Institut du Monde Arabe

Paris through one of the apertures

If your French is better than mine, you can read more at: http://www.imarabe.org/ (Or on Wikipedia.)

Scrambling up and up

A week ago I climbed up Table Mountain with friends. We took the India Venster route as it’s not as well known – or as crowded – as the route up through Platteklip Gorge. The path runs up under the cableway most of the way up, then passes around the mountain above Camps Bay and finally ends at the top of Platteklip Gorge.

The ravine through which the route runs apparently looks like the shape of India when viewed from below – though I couldn’t see any resemblance myself..! And the venster (‘window’ in Afrikaans) is formed by some of the rocks in the ravine and frames a great view of the surrounding mountains.

It was an exciting climb but far more strenuous than I was expecting. I suppose I’ve always viewed Table Mountain pretty much as a postcard – or a dramatic backdrop. Until now...

I soon discovered that setting off on no more than a cup of coffee was not a good start..! Although we began climbing by 8.30, it was very hot by then already and quite still on the lower slopes. I think my blood sugar level must have been too low because I’d only been climbing about twenty minutes when I felt so dizzy that I crumpled into a little heap on the steps leading up from the lower cableway station. Those last steps I could only do munching on my apple – and that, incredibly, got me most of the way up..! (Well, an apple, plenty of water and a whole lot of stubborn determination not to miss out on any of it...).

We made it up in about three hours, stopping just below the upper cableway station to eat our sandwiches and watch the cable cars whizzing by overhead.

Taking the cable car back down felt far too easy but, as a very inexperienced rock climber, I wouldn’t climb down India Venster (this can be dangerous if you don’t know the route) – I have far too much respect for the mountain to attempt that – just yet.

Slogging up those steps...

Beginning to climb

Scrambling up

Hanging on

Cape Town and Table Bay in the distance

At India Venster

Through the venster

A glimpse of Devil's Peak

A cable car whizzing by overhead

Going around the mountain

Naomi and I very nearly, almost, there...

(Thanks, Brahm, for the great climbing photos!)

Rambling over the mountain

When my mom was here on holiday earlier this month, she decided she wanted to go up Table Mountain – by cable car, not on foot! She’d never been up and the last time I’d gone up was years ago so we set off.

The cable car I’d been in was the Seventies design (– the cableway itself was opened in 1929 –) which was of course very much smaller and slower than the current cable cars which are circular and have rotating floors so that everyone gets a 360 degree view of Cape Town and Table Bay. The ride does seem far too short though..!

It wasn’t a perfectly clear day but we enjoyed taking our time – and plenty of photos of the surrounding mountains, the rocks and trails, the wildlife and fynbos – along the path that leads to Maclear’s Beacon. As the wind grew stronger and the clouds began blowing up, we had to head back to the upper cableway station and never quite made it to the highest point on the mountain.

Maclear’s Beacon was built in 1844 by Sir Thomas Maclear who was Astronomer Royal at the Cape. The 3 m cairn marks the highest point at 1086 m – though it could also be 1087 m, 1085 m or possibly even 1084.6 m! (There seem to be conflicting records out there...)

We were up on the mountain about three hours and did a lot more walking than we thought we would. There was also a section that was a bit steeper and I took some fun shots of my mom tackling the ascent, getting down low to take them so that it appeared all the more difficult..!

I didn’t know then I’d be scrambling up the mountain myself a few weeks later – but more about that in a later post...

At the lower cableway station

On the way up to the upper cableway station

Table Bay and the city down below

Lion's Head

Rambling paths

That steep bit...

Looking down at the city

On the way down – and the steps I’d soon enough be slogging up...

Mama and me in India

Around this time, three years ago, my mom and I travelled to India together. It was a first for both of us – and it was also the first time my mom had travelled anywhere on her own.

I had friends from Kerala: a couple who were also teachers and living in South Africa, and some of the teachers I was working with at the time.

As I was living and working in the UAE, I met my mom in Dubai and we travelled on together from there. She did well to get to Dubai, despite a very last-minute hiccough with her visa that had been her travel agent’s mistake, and arrived looking just a little proud of herself and quite ready for our adventure.

And what an adventure it was... Before we’d even arrived, I had got sick so arrived very early in the morning, eyes and nose streaming, to find our guesthouse in Kochi (Cochin) not at all how it had been described – there was of course no mention of the smell, the noise or the mosquitoes on its website! Well, things could only get better... and they did – so much better!

We moved to a small hotel in Ernakulam and took the ferry across to explore Fort Cochin where we wandered through the narrow streets, stopping along the way at the markets and some of the historic buildings, and to watch the fishermen at the huge and striking Chinese fishing nets along the northern shore.

We hired a car and a driver (which was more expensive than taking the bus but still within our budget and a lot more comfortable and convenient) to take us up to the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary in the Western Ghats. It’s a green and hilly region filled with cardamom, tea and rubber-tree plantations. We stayed in Kumily and from there visited a spice garden where we climbed up to a viewpoint in the trees, rode an elephant through the forests at Elephant Junction (another first for us both and very brave of my mom!), spotted elephants in the wild around Periyar Lake and went on a short but quite strenuous walk through the forests around the lake, rafting across at one point – and hiding in the bushes when we heard something come crashing through the trees up ahead (– I’m still not too sure what that was..!).

We also took a day tour of the backwaters south of Kochi and some of the villages around. This was perhaps the best day of our holiday as it was such a leisurely trip and such a serene and beautiful part of Kerala.

And we met many friendly and helpful people, found much to laugh about (including, albeit affectionately, some of our more hippy fellow travellers) and so much to see and do. At the end of the holiday, we joked that we would go back one day in a far more hippy wardrobe ourselves. Maybe we will...

My mom’s motto for the trip: ‘Have daughter, will travel.’

At Jumeirah Beach, Dubai

At the fish market in Kochi (Cochin)

Stepping off the ferry at the Customs Jetty (Fort Cochin)

The higgledy-piggledy architecture of Ambadi in Kumily (http://www.hotelambadi.com)

A baby elephant at Elephant Junction near Kumily (http://www.elephantjunction.com)

At a spice garden near Kumily

On the backwaters south of Kochi

Mama and me..?

On the street

This may also be part of the Inside Out Project – it was at the same site in Woodstock and is also a black and white photograph pasted up – but it’s not a close-up portrait like the others and this little boy is much younger than the students from Hout Bay High. Perhaps it’s by one of the kids but not part of the original project.

It caught my attention anyway – just like I seem to have caught this little man’s attention too. There’s something quite grown up yet vulnerable about him, in his jacket that’s just a little too big and missing his shoes. Yet his look is as enquiring of me as I am of him.

And this too was on the same disused building. It's by Cape Town street artist Faith47. It looks to me like a baby elephant – collapsed, dead? Almost dreaming – or perhaps in the middle of a nightmare.

To find out more about Faith47: http://www.faith47.com/

Turning the world inside out

I spotted this in Woodstock. It’s part of French photographer and street artist JR’s Inside Out Project.

The Inside Out Project has been travelling around the world and the photographs that were taken in Cape Town were pasted up around the city over five days in July last year. The project aims to address problems specific to each area and in Cape Town it’s racism between black and ‘coloured’ young people.

Unfortunately there’s very little about the project on JR’s website or the Inside Out website but, after some searching for it online, I found the story behind it...

Inside Out Cape Town was a collaboration between local government, Lalela Project (an organisation which provides art and music education to children-at-risk after school and over the weekends), Cape Town photographers Hasan and Husain Essop, as well as JR. The Nelson Mandela Foundation also supported the project as it culminated on Mandela Day 2011, 18 July. Thirty Hout Bay High School students were taught the basics of portrait photography over two months by twin brothers Hasan and Husain. This group consisted of 15 students from Imizamo Yethu (the black community) and 15 from Hangberg (the ‘coloured’ community). The students from the two groups then paired up with each other (one from each community) in order to get to know the other person before photographing each other. JR’s team made the large-scale prints (some as big as 10 x 15 metres) and the kids then pasted their portraits up at each other’s homes and helped paste them up at a number of places around Cape Town, including the Central Library.

JR was awarded the 2011 TED prize. He's said that he wants to catch the attention of people who are not museum visitors. Most people don’t have museums around them or just don’t go to them – let alone pay to see exhibitions. He says his work ‘mixes art and action; it talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit’. He also says that his art hasn’t changed the world – but it might have made someone somewhere laugh unexpectedly (http://www.jr-art.net/).

Well, this photograph made me smile. There’s just something irresistibly mischievous about someone pulling faces...

And I hope that the kids who participated found something that really involved them in the project – curiosity, openness, some recognition, a little more trust and understanding maybe?

At the time, one of the students from Imizamo Yethu Amanda Gaetywa said that pasting up the portraits of black and ‘coloured’ students side by side was ‘like we are bringing the two communities together.’ Another student Zimasa Dyani said that ‘at first we didn’t speak to the coloured people because we have been really separated from apartheid and now we have a stepping stone to communicate with them’ (Cape Times). Students continue to participate in Lalela Project’s programmes.

Watch this if you’d like to find out more about JR: 

If you’d like to participate in Inside Out (you can upload your own photographs which will be made into posters and sent back to you to paste up in your own area): http://www.insideoutproject.net

A SEN school in Margate in KwaZulu-Natal has also participated in the project – you can see their students’ portraits on the website.

From coast to coast

Surrounded by piles of papers and files and books, there were times when I thought 2011 just seemed to be flying by – and what had I actually done? So looking back at the photos I took over the course of the year was a good reminder of how far I’d actually come... I’d moved down to Cape Town, from the east coast to the west, and caught up with old school friends and friends from Japan and the Middle East. I’d shared a lot of ups and downs with friends on my course and course teachers, and lots of laughs and advice (not all from me to them!) with many of my past students. I came back for a family wedding and spent time with visiting family from the UK. And, of course, I went back to my studies after years of working and travelling in the Middle and Far East – and finally got through all of that coursework.

Looking ahead, I’ll be getting stuck into my research this year and getting back to some teaching. I’ll be driving down to Cape Town in ‘Maya’ which will make getting around and out of the city that much easier. And I’ll be back just in time to meet a friend’s long awaited and, by then, newly born daughter...

These are some of the sights from my travels last year. (I’d wanted to choose a photo from each month but I hadn’t taken enough throughout 2011 – they cover the year anyway.)