editors note: this is a long essay…but, i think certainly worthy of discussion…stick with it…do not even start to watch this if you do not have a solid 15 minutes at your disposal….. -david alan harvey
Richard Mark Dobson – The Crest Hotel
I remember the Crest Hotel way back in the 70’s. In fact it was from this hotel that I gathered my first impressions of our newly adopted land, South Africa.
Emigrating here with my parents from England in January 1975, I was 12 years old when we arrived at the door of the Crest after a short cab ride from the austere Jan Smuts airport.
Upon arrival at this comfortable 3 star hotel, a stone’s throw from the bustling boulevards of Hillbrow, I was awestruck by the views from our 12th floor window. Glittering skyscrapers and a zillion apartments surrounded us on all sides; our hotel it seemed was at the epicenter of all this glitz, with its lively terrace and sparkling pool. For the two weeks that we lived in Hillbrow at the Crest while my father sought rented accommodation in the leafier northern suburbs, I gathered impressions of this ‘Americanized’ metropolis, admiring its scale & lofty buildings, sensing its economic presence and buzz, all the while searching out the exotica of black faces to remind myself that I was in Africa after all.
Certainly during those first few weeks while strolling past the café & bakeries and soda pop joints of Pretoria & Kotze streets on balmy summer evenings, I could see clearly that this was the abode and playground for a predominantly white cast. I saw lots of happy white faces! An illusion of blissful living. An illusion of harmony and human equality. Yes this was a place of happy shiny white people, and I, the little white kid who’d just stepped off a plane in Africa from England, was entranced.
32 years later, I return to the Crest. Still entranced but for different reasons. The place has changed, the city has changed, and the country has changed. I’ve changed.
The Crest hotel therefore is my personal attempt to join dots, and answer pertinent questions to my own sense of failed idealism and dislocation. Projected through the presence of others, the Crest after all is where my journey to South Africa began. For many presented here today though, this is where their journey will end, or has ended already. It’s where their relationship with South Africa is coming to an end too, but certainly did not begin.
As an artist/photographer I intend to explore further themes or locations that I hope will allow me to investigate my relationship with this country and my country of birth, England. And how the two sit incongruously side by side within my own psyche. The Crest is where I chose to begin this investigation.
Richard Mark Dobson (Cape Town 20 April 2009).
(editors note: this is a long essay…but, i think certainly worthy of discussion…stick with it…do not even start to watch this if you do not have a solid 15 minutes at your disposal….. -david alan harvey
Photographs: Richard Mark Dobson
Websites:
http://rmde.jimdo.com
http://www.richardmarkdobson.com
RT @PDN is looking for outstanding published essays/multimedia projects to feature in our “Picture Story” column. E-mail dwalker100@comcast.net
just a quick thought on the thread about the Crest, (that the essay according to some focused on the depravity, and hopelessness in a capitalist way) really i thought the piece was in a way sort of humorous, a black comedy, sad but with whimsical elements that kind of lifted the energy, until i got to the suicide of course, which kind of knocked the wind out of me. but my perception of the essay was that its primary intent was a descriptive one. with wonderful cityscapes, intriguing portraits and a sense of reality thats not easy to capture. i learned something about a place that i would’ve never known. a strange and bizarre reality. also, i thought the piece was obviously personal, Richards expression, a portrait of himself in a round about way. i did not get a sense of exploitation in anyway whats so ever but more a sense of a certain dignity thats slowly crumbling away.
i viewed the essay once and thats enough for me. certain images are sustained in my mind.
to critisize this essay because it may not offer any positive change or benefit those wthin the piece seems like such a pointless critique. how does that critique itself benfit anything. who can say what the outcome of a thing maybe anyway.
some people see things in one certain way only, and if what they see does not fit the mold then its written off for this reason or that. seems like a very limited, basic, or uninspired state of mind.
hope this makes some sense…
best
what a beautiful, heartbreaking story, told with such minimum.
i felt, it could have been developed in any place of the world and about many people. the thread connecting all human beings: being lonely, getting old, abandoned, and death.
thank you so much for sharing. would love to see more of your work
Very powerful and minimal, yet very dense. This is for sure a new language and yes my friends the bar has been lifted. Congratulations Richard. Hope your other journeys throught places of your life will come to light in a near future.
wrobertangell … perfect sense and the reactions here often surprise me for it being essentially a group of photographers. I just have a hard time with tired arguments against seeing … seems so very strange, for here.
Strong,emotional and sad a great effort.
Wonderful, sad, depressing, and ultimately full of life piece. Especially good considering the photographers personal connection (makes it much more than just a “look at this crazy place” kind of essay).
I’m a bit late to the discussion here but it’s been a good one. As to Jim: why can’t we just be curious? Why does photography need to change anything? I doubt the subjects had any allusions as to what the photographer would do for them – they probably just enjoyed the company and telling their story to somebody, anybody.
WROBERTANGELL…
you make perfect sense
9Back home with a decently fast connection)
Really nice, Mark. I sure did not see it as someone telling us” here’s a problem that needs fixing”, more like a long bittersweet poem, but also a window on people that absolutely no one would ever think of, let alone talk about, if it was not for you bringing them to us. Maybe it’s about Jo’burg, maybe not. And maybe it’s more sweet than bitter, after all. About getting older, about what that was that will never be, with an aura of understatement (it helped that i did not quite understand allthat was spoken1) in which resides much of the poetry of your images. What an unique and worthy contribution. BURN is great with such work.
this is a powerful example of multimedia storytelling: it works, definetely… many of the images (most of them are self-standing good images and not just filler, imo) and of he situations remained with me after the essay finished. My personal feeling is that life, in some ways, transcends us and essays like this are sort of hints in this respect: that’s why they don’t need to solve problems, neither to offer clear answers.
By the way, Crest hotel could be a darker-darker version of Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water.
Very powerful essay.
Crest hotel look very old age. thank you very much.
Excellent piece of documentary journalism. Very poignant and a wonderful ‘snapshot’ of humanity.
After reading an interview with the photographer here
http://text.hmmm.co.za/2009/06/richard-mark-dobson-the-crest-hotel/
I get the feeling that the artist statement attached here is a complete fiction. Could someone read the interview and comment on that?
Jim, I read it and, to me, it neither confirms or denies the text on Burn. The photographer COULD have stayed at the Crest upon his arrival in South Africa as a twelve-year-old but it does seem odd that he doesn’t mention it in the interview. Of course he may have mentioned it but it is just not reported by the interviewer.
Well spotted Jim, you should work for a newspaper!
Perhaps Richard could post an explanation here?
Mike.