Capewinter

Yes. It’s possible I may never photograph anything besides cats again. @withoutaleaf made a little tent on the couch for them in this cold weather.

We’re having a late winter cold snap.

Sekrit boi. June gets surprisingly cold in winter in Cape Town because our houses aren’t heated. So though it’s not cold in the big sense, your house becomes really damn cold. But this boi knows how to deal with it.

@kanesnaps and me in 1997. I knew how to use the self-timer. Unfortunately I didn’t know how aperture and depth-of-field corresponded in those days. This was influenced - without the technical ability to pull it off - by the famous Mick Rock photoshoot of Syd Barrett (I was obsessed with Syd Barrett) with his purple and orange striped floorboards. I should be very clear that the weed smoking Bob Marley poster belonged to my flatmate thank-you-very-much. I, of course, had a Bill Brandt print up in my room #pretentious . ...

June 1996 was a funny time for me and @sad_ivan . Yessiree.

A different kitter. Trinket has a new game of trying to catch her tail under the banister.

Haven’t taken a minibus taxi in a couple years. Convenient though when I end up on Main Road. And a lot more comfortable than in the 90s.

The shuttered remnants of Gandalf’s - for about 20 years the main place for undergrads and other young people to go and enjoy cheap booze, crowds jacked up on youth hormones, and rock ’n roll music. Ian McKellan was once photographed hanging off the sign while shooting something in the area. I played a couple of good shows there though even when the place first opened I felt like a teacher chaperoning at a high school dance. Rock ’n roll is now on its last legs as a mass youth movement.

Off Lower Main Road Obz yesterday. Not much is holding out against gentrification now. The city is content for the few who weren’t already pushed off to distant wastelands by Apartheid to be pushed off to distant wastelands by rising rents and redevelopment. At top right is a mosque that I didn’t know existed. The daily call to prayer is emblematic for me of our diverse city and the history of that diversity in building it. Islam in SA began with Indonesian and Malaysian slaves being sent here by their Dutch colonists. Political prisoners too. The first book ever written in Afrikaans was the Qran, translated by a political prisoner from ‘Dutch Batavia’, Tuan Guru. ...

Cape Town is liquid again. But for how long? The city ignoring clear warnings in 2011, migration of desperate people to the city will only increase with the climate crisis that simultaneously will make the city drier.