Sabelo Mlangeni: Ghost Towns

Sabelo Mlangeni... Piekweik Dry (2011, Digital silver gelatin print). From the exhibition Sabelo Mlangeni: Ghost Towns at Michael Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town, SA. "...The Ghost Towns series depicts small South African towns that have been abandoned and forgotten, left on the edge of nowhere, while transformation takes place in the country's urban areas. Mlangeni describes them as follows: 'Quietness; emptiness; grass on a pedestrian pavement, cracked roads, closed-down shops; these images suggest both fiction and non-fiction, past and present scars left unattended. The suggestion of death. Forgotten towns with a rich history that has been lost in the fast-moving pace of a South African landscape. Most of the people have left and migrated to bigger towns and cities; attracted by economic opportunities, only returning for funerals of their loved ones. The photographs document [these] small towns today, the shift that has taken place, and where freedom and opportunity have somehow skipped past these towns.'"