#Culture

You may have noticed this already, but I get a lot of blog post ideas from my outings with the Joburg Photowalkers. Photowalking is a simple yet brilliant concept: A gang of people get together, walk places, and take pictures of stuff. It’s the perfect way to meet people, improve your photography, and go places you would never go alone with an expensive camera around your neck.

Note: The title of this post refers to an American advertising campaign for beef. I’m no fan of the American beef industry but the slogan fits the post.

I recently had coffee in Rosebank (a shopping district just north of Melville) with my blogger friend Jane. After coffee we popped into The Grillhouse – one of the most popular steakhouses in Joburg – to say hello to Jane’s friend David, the Grillhouse’s operations manager.

My fascination with Hillbrow – a former middle-class inner suburb that is now the toughest neighborhood in Joburg – began in February when I explored Hillbrow on a Joburg Photowalk. When I heard there would be another Hillbrow Photowalk this past weekend, exploring the grounds of the old Johannesburg General Hospital, I signed up, stat.

This week I attended a Q&A discussion with David Goldblatt, one of South Africa’s most legendary photographers, at the Market Photo Workshop in Joburg. The Market Photo Workshop, which Goldblatt founded in the 1980s, is a school for aspiring photographers, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Workshop is currently running an exhibition of Goldblatt’s photographs that lasts until the end of July.

Yeoville, much like Hillbrow and other inner-city suburbs in Jozi, has transformed over the last three decades. Once an artsy, mixed-race (but primarily white) neighborhood, similar to Melville, Yeoville is now a chaotic, pan-African cocktail-shaker. (I almost said “melting pot” but that’s too cliché for words.)