Claire McNulty - photographer

Claire McNulty first got an Honours degree in Psychology and Dance. She then followed another passion and studied photography at the Fine Art Department, Rhodes University - Grahamstown. She has worked as a commercial photographer in South Africa (and surrounds whenever possible). Much of this has been editorial, including portraits, interiors, entertainment and still lives. For her soul she likes to shoot on an old Polaroid Land Camera, given to her by a French photographer that she once assisted. The natural world and other cultures are also a source of inspiration. Her photographs have been exhibited in Cape Town-Month of Photography, Baobab Gallery-East London, Cintsa River Golf Estate-Group Exhibition and The Square Gallery-Port Alfred. She is currently working as the assistant curator of the Visual Archive at UCT, and continues to freelance in her spare time.

Visit Claire's website http://www.clairemcnulty.co.za/ to see her portfolio.

Q&A with Angela

ES: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
Angela: The possibility of discovering a more complex and universal language that can reach so many audiences and minds.

ES: Why have you chosen to work in South Africa?
Angela: I wanted to have an experience outside my country and I found in South Africa so many similarities in terms of history, socio-economic and cultural challenges which have reaffirmed my idea of creating new messages and untold perceptions of reality.

ES: What have you learnt about yourself through making documentary films?
Angela: I’ve encountered in documentary filmmaking a way of discovering myself as an active individual that can reproduce and spread the information absorbed in a creative and positive way.

ES: If you could collaborate or work with any artist in the world today, who would it be and why?
Angela: I’ve had the fortune to meet very interesting intellectuals, researchers, historians, writers, photographers, filmmakers, artists and activists in Latin America and Africa, with whom I’ve already been ‘ cooking’ different projects to develop collaboratively. Those, my friends, are the people I look forward to working with. I don’t really think or dream about working with someone I haven’t met.

ES: If there’s one boundary or misconception you could knock down about filmmaking, what would it be?
Angela: People who haven’t ever worked making films usually think the process is quite simple and easy to do, and thus they tend to underestimate and devalue the creative filmmaking process. Another important and overlooked aspect of filmmaking: the question of responsibility. Part of the industry seems unaware of the powerful responsibility that we have as communicators.

Angela Ramirez - filmmaker

Originally from Colombia, I am an audiovisual communicator passionate about documentary filmmaking. Interested in the social and cultural aspects of the African Diaspora in South America, I made my first documentary in 2005. Welcome a Tumaco is a short, independent production about an unknown Afro Carnival that takes place on a small island of Colombia’s Pacific Coast. It examines a controversial debate concerning the place of traditional and modern music in the community, concluding that music provides social cohesion regardless of its genre. Welcome a Tumaco won the award for Best Documentary Film at the CineCun Festival in 2005 and New Creators category at the Cartagena Film Festival in 2006. It has been selected for festivals in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Belgium and France and has been broadcast on Colombian National Television.

Over the last six years, I have made several institutional and promotional documentaries covering diverse topics. I have also designed workshops for teenagers, directed a public television program for children and managed castings for the Colombian featured films “Satanas”, “La Sangre y la Lluvia” y “La Milagrosa”.

At the end of 2007, I made Celeste, an experimental short film that documents a journey through Bogotá. Always looking up into the sky, Celeste explores well-known locations of the city but offers a different point of view. The documentary won the third place for Best Documentary in the Instinto Bogotá II Competition organized by the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art (MAMBO).

In 2008, I joined El Colectivo, an independent group of visual and plastic artists, historians and philosophers. The group explored the notion of collective memory, the relationship between the arts, social sciences and academics as well as the need to raise and debate issues regarding national history and the present. The objective of the group was to introduce Colombia's collective memory to the public sphere and give new meaning to it.

South Africa was to be another journey but I discovered a musical landscape similar to that of Colombia, prompting the idea of a documentary about music in Cape Town. With Mama Goema, I hope to once again, demonstrate that music can bring people together and be an agent of healing. The world premiere is going to take place in June during the Encounters Film Festival.

Parallel to this project, I’ve been making short videos for different South African artists and cultural events such as the Pan African Space Station. I participated also in My Town Competition, Encounters Documentary Film Festival 2010, with “The Fashion Gap”, a 3-minute piece that won the Public Award.

I’m currently part of a three-month International Artist Residency Programme at the Greatmore Studios in Woodstock, where I am going to be directing a series of workshops on filmmaking for young people and also developing some other projects to be exhibited at the Greatmore Gallery.

Visit http://angelamaraga.blogspot.com/ to view her portfolio.

Expression Session is back!

Hello Cape Town!
Autumn is slowly making way for winter, but before the hues of red and orange leave our skies and streets, Expression Session will be warming you up with the Mother City's art in all its forms.

Our first event for this year is on Thursday May 26, and this year we've decided to do things just a little bit differently. Instead of only focusing on young and up-and-coming artists, we've decided to include more experienced but lesser known artists on the bill. We think the range of experience, age and art forms will add to the diversity of the event. Integrating artists of different experiences is also makes for interesting conversation and ideas.

This month we feature photographer Claire McNulty, Afrikaans hip hop emcee Lee-Ursus Alexander, visual artist Felicity Purdon and filmmaker Angela Ramirez. Our resident DJ, DJ Juice will be on the decks.

Join us on Thursday May 26, at 7pm, at Ragazzi, 33 Long Street, Cape Town. R20 gets you in the door.

Mary-Anne Solomons - theatre performer

My name is Mary-Anne Solomons and I was born on 31 March 1989 in Kalksteenfontein, Netreg on the Cape Flats. I grew up with my mom and have a younger sister who is currently writing her matric exam at Cedar High School. I started my schooling career in 1996 at Montana Primary.

As a little girl I loved to sing, especially in church. I remember it was the times of Sisqo and the Spice Girls, I would gather my friends and teach them some songs and dance movement. There was one lady who told my aunt that she should enter me in competitions.

During 1997 I had to drop out of Grade 2 because my mother could not afford to keep me in school. Late 1998 me, my sister and mother moved to my aunt where I’m currently living in Mitchell’s Plain. In 1999 I went back to school where I started Grade 2. My primary school career ended at the age of 14. I enrolled at Cedar High School of the Arts, where I completed Grade 12 in 2008.

In 2007 is when my dream as a performer came true because I went on stage for the first time as a student at Cedar High School. I and a group of fellow drama students entered the WOW competition and we won. I received an award for Best Supporting actress. I also belonged to a Jazz Band and was part of the Rock Challenge (Dance, etc.)

During 2008 I went with “Kanna hy ko huistoe” a drama production to the National Aardklop Festival. I was also part of numerous other productions like “Kinkel in die kabel, The Invisibles, Boesman and Lena, Tietie Moetie Wietie and Mix Masala which was all directed by Peter Braaf, the drama teacher at Cedar High School. That was in the last year of my high school career.

In 2009 I enrolled at New Africa Theatre Academy in Athlone doing a National Certificate in Performing Arts, NQF Level 5. After graduating from New Africa Theatre Academy I became part of a learnership in 2010 and did two professional productions namely Robben Island Youth Speak directed by Thami Mbongo and 11:41 based on a short story and poetry by James Matthews directed by Clare Stopford and assisted by Mbulelo Grootboom.

Q&A with Stephen

ES: What do you hope to achieve with your photography?
S: Initially, I became a photographer thinking that I would have a job that pays me to travel the world. That is obviously still my dream (apart from working for National Geographic one day), but as you grow as a photographer you learn that being a photographer gives you a voice that is quite unlike a voice that anyone else has. Photographers create images from instances in time that actually existed, even though the images are a result of the imagination/mind, they carry with them a sense of authenticity. It is this sense of authenticity that gives photography its power. And it is this power that photography carries with it that I wish to harness, so that I may be able to express myself the way I want to. This has become my new goal as a photographer, which is more important than travelling and making money.

ES: Who are your artistic influences and what have you learnt from past artists in your field?
S: Visual artists who inspire me? I have a few people who I could say were part of the reason why I decided to become a photographer, James Nachtwey being one of them. I have a few personal photographer friends who inspire me. The one that stands out most in my mind is a man named Garth Stead. Garth was the best photographer I ever met in person. He was also undoubtedly the best picture editor in Cape Town, possibly South Africa. Sadly he can’t carry on teaching us photographers the way he used to, he passed away last year. The other inspiration I have is a youngish photographer who works at foto24 in Cape Town, his name is Michael Hammond. He is a photographer with a particular knack for portraiture, and is already developing a style of his own, and his reputation amongst the photographer fraternity is growing.

ES: What is the hardest shoot/job you've been on so far?
S: If you were to ask me what the most difficult shoot is I’ve ever done, I’d probably tell you about a job I was sent on one late afternoon about 20 kilometres outside of Cape Town on the N7. It was a motor vehicle accident involving three trucks. When I arrived on the scene, the road was covered with the contents of the trucks, which included beer, and milk cartons. The thing that made it such a difficult job were the five corpses lying on the road, on the axel of one of the trucks, next to the road, and one hanging out of the driver’s side… All the bodies were covered in slightly blood-stained white sheets. Post-traumatic stress works strangely, while I was there I was totally ok, but for days afterwards I couldn’t help but see that accident whenever I closed my eyes.

ES: If there's one boundary or misconception you could knock down about photography, what would it be?
S: If there is one misconception I’d like to do away with, it’d be that digital photography is in some way better, superior, etc, than the traditional film technology used before. I could go on for ages about the advantages and disadvantages of both technologies. I count myself fortunate because of the fact that I have used both technologies, as new and up and coming photographers today never learned photography with film. Each technology has its advantages, and I think that both need to be learned and understood so that you will be better equipped to tackle any photographic assignment.

• You can visit Stephen's blog to see his work.
  

Stephen Williams - photographer

I am a photographer with experience mainly in the newspaper photography field. I gained this experience working for the last two years at Die Burger, Cape Times, Beeld, Rapport, Kaap Rapport and Cape Argus. To work as a photographer for a newspaper means that you need to be able to shoot almost any kind of photography imaginable: sport, news, fashion, advertising, promotional, portraiture, celebrity (paparazzi), architecture, feature, documentary, social unrest, marches, and sometimes, bullet dodging. These are all things that I have had to shoot at one time or another. Apart from newspapers, I work for Old Mutual, accommodation companies, and private wedding clients.

Visit Stephen's blog to see some of his work