A dissertation in fulfilment of the Degree of Masters of Arts in Fine Arts (MAFA) at the University of Witwatersrand, 2017 / In 2012, the Johannesburg-based artists’ collective, Center for Historical Reenactments (CHR), presented Fr(agile), a social sculpture and public intervention, following a threeday residency at the Alf Kumalo Museum in Diepkloof, Soweto. The Fr(agile) Residency intended to reimagine the archive by searching it for points of interest related to visual artmaking. This research dissertation aims to revisit Fr(agile) in order to explore new ways of engaging the photographic archive, and artist-led processes and methodologies within this archive. The archive was never completely sorted although Kumalo had, had intentions of properly cataloguing his archive and had begun the process of digitising his photographs at his museum. With the archive closed for legal reasons, this research will draw on memory and account, and this dissertation will be presented orally. I feel it is necessary to remember what the archive was like during the residency, but to also propose ways to activate the archive through contemporary visual arts practice. The research further proposes ways in which archives can occupy a space within contemporary visual arts, how they can potentially function when looked at as contemporary objects, and begin to question the ephemeral relationship between the photographic medium, archive and memory. / XL2018

Submitted in fulfilment of the Degree of Master of Arts (Fine Arts) Johannesburg, March 2017 / This dissertation uses David Goldblatt’s seminal photobook, On the Mines (1973, revised 2012) to mediate a biographical conversation with Raymond Zavala, a migrant mineworker who left Mozambique in 1962 to live and work in Johannesburg. On the Mines was used as a vehicle to examine intimate details of one man’s life in the mines, focusing particularly on a mine in Roodepoort known as Durban Deep, where Raymond worked for 38 years. During my visits with Raymond, On the Mines was kept in hand as he and I walked through what once was a prosperous mining town. We would discuss his day-to-day life as a migrant, mineworker, husband and father, and began layering and inserting our own stories and photographs over and into On the Mines in an attempt to portray a more personal account of one person’s life on the mines. Goldblatt’s photographic archive is crucial to this process in that it enabled me to initiate conversations with Raymond about his personal history, memory and identity. This research, encompassed in the visual biography presented here, was created in collaboration with Raymond. He guided me through this process by directing the narrative of his own story, recommending specific landscapes and people for me to meet and photograph.  I have chosen to present this practice in the form of a photobook, so that its concept and content can be shared as a critical resolution of my visual and narrative engagement. / XL2018