Category Archives: Photography

Cape, Fishing, Photography, Short Stories, Travel

Fishermen of Kalk Bay

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Fishermen, Fishing gear
Working the Gear

I spent nearly two years regularly visiting the harbour village of Kalk Bay on the peninsular of the Cape of Good Hope and which sits comfortably in the northern nook of False Bay (Die Blou Dam). Many of my images were originally made with digital media and in colour and the results were initially very satisfying. For this reason, and for the pleasure of the fishing people of Kalk Bay,  I produced a small book with many of these pictures; “Fishermen – Kalk Bay”. This is available at Kalky’s on the harbour and at the KB Modern in a very limited edition.

However, I found some lack of satisfaction with the perfect medium of digital colour and decided to complete the entire 15 images for a new exhibition in black and white. I began shooting with a wonderful Nikon F100, one of the latest and most capable 35mm film cameras produced by Nikon. I have many of these images still to be printed! This ease of practice still did not generate a feeling of accomplishment.

In January of 2016, I  found a 1983 Hasselblad 501c from a very well known photographer who had decided to close down her Silver Hallide facility; the whole kit had never been outside the studio and was in perfect condition. The famous Hasselblad is a square (6cm x 6cm) medium format camera. Focusing; exposure and film manipulation is entirely manual and in fact quite physical! This was the trigger that I had been lacking and my shooting schedule took off with unexpected verve. This included a 15 hour stint on a 12m line-fishing vessel in quite rough conditions (with a heavy manual camera). By October I had the first 10 images printed and framed and every reasonable image printed as a rough proof in my own darkroom.

The final prints were made by the world renowned Master Printer – Dennis Da Silva at The Alternative Print Workshop in Johannesburg. All images were printed on Ilford Fine Art silver hallide paper, signed and numbered (Only 10 images of each will be produced). Dennis and I spent 20 marathon hours in the darkroom to finish this collection. This exhibition should really have been in the name of Dennis De Silva. I just took the pics.

Finally there were 15 images hanging at the notoriously delicious Olympia Cafe (You have to try their Yellowtail) and I was given the space for the whole month of February. I think that the Olympia Cafe is by far the funkiest Art Space in the Cape. Do try and visit some of the shows there.

You can see more of the images in B&W and  Digital Colour at: renepaulgosselin.photoshelter.com

Lesotho, Photography

The Lady Grinding Corn

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Grinding corn on the traditional stones

 

I was held by the arm softly, by a beautiful women whilst my friend Mike Feldman was shooting the drying and sorting of the maize seed at Ha Mantla, near Ramabanta, in the higher area of Lesotho. The lady pulled me around the corner of the village towards her house and asked me to enter gesturing to me to take photographs. I tried hard to concentrate on the milling area she pointed out to me but her kindness had touched me too much and my camera shook and would not focus anymore than my eyes could, filled with tears of unwanted sympathy, self centered melancholy, memories and heartache of a peasant farmer, yearning for the comfort of his origins. I am afraid that these photographs are not a sufficient tribute to the fortitude of this women.

 

Photography

Basotho People at Work ~ The Story of the Book

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There was no great plan or ‘skeleton’ of my book. In about the year 2004 I began to collect images and categorised them into various aspects of life in Lesotho; Transport, agriculture, industry etc.

These themes were all put together into a very rough mock-up.The software for this cost 12 quid in London. Being a trader at heart, my first thought was for sales material to help sell the project.

One miserable winter day in June 2009, having nothing better to do, I went to the book launch of “Then and Now”. This is an anthology of images taken before and after 1992 by South Africa’s top photographers. There I met the editor Riaan De Villiers, of Highveld Press. He edited that book and of course he knows all the contributing photographers. When I showed him my mock-up, he said that we must publish. We did, in November of that year. The skeleton may have appeared somewhere between these two events but it must still be locked in a cupboard.

We spent three months working on the layout of the book. A large amount of time and thought was spent on the format! The 2 dimensional proportions were discussed and thrashed around more that you would think is possible. Then the weight, the number of pages and therefore the number of images. After weeks of cross-thinking we were able to look at the selection of images. I think this was only in September and we had to be on the shelves in November! Riaan re-designed his office, juggled around his staff and installed special daylight balanced lighting so that we could re-grade all the “RAW” files of the images together and not farm out. He did most of it at night, un-disturbed by staff and the nuisance of light filtering in though special blinds had been installed for the project.

At last we could begin the final selection of images. We still had 200 (out of thousands) and needed to reduce the number to about 80. Pages, weight, rhythm, tedium attention span; I had no idea that these things were so important in a book of pictures. We took two weeks working with one of the top book designers in South Africa, Tim Sheasby, to put the book together and find it’s “handle”. Difficult to describe the feeling on that last day of October when the final Pdf file was set via FTP to Lawprint in Midrand. The excitement did not abate as Riaan and I visited the printer daily. We were to check each batch of “pulls”; the eight page – A1 sheets pulled from the giant off-set litho Leidenburg 12 station printing press. Each pull was carefully scrutinised by the master printer and checked in great detail. It appeared that Riaan grading of the images had been precise; only very slight adjustment of the “blacks” was required before the presses were set in motion for the main run.

A week later the first books were in our hands with that unmistakeable ‘fresh-off-the-press smell’.

Basotho People at Work was in the shops in November 2009, as planned.

Basotho People at Work
Basotho People at Work
Lesotho, Photography, Travel

A bunch of lonesome heroes.

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Gaelle,David, Ben and Jo are in Malealea this week-end. Tomorrow all four ride out in a possie for a whole days ride up to a village in the mountains. They will eat and drink and talk with with the shepherd village and Chief Khotso. You can see Ntate’s Khotso’s Merino goats in my book. Sleep in a goatsherd hut with mice and little chickens running around inside that hut. Pigs snorting outside! When you get back to the lodge after another full day’s ride with the lovely smell and sweat of the ponies and their leathery tack and the aromas from the pastures, cattle and oxen which envelope you as you pass, you will not like the smell of the tourists!!!

A bunch of lonesome and very quarrelsome heros….
Photography, Water

water moving me

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I have just had 5 ~ 35mm negs printed by someone who is probably one of the worlds best hand print (silver nitrate) artisans; Dennis Da Silva. 45 years in the dark room. It has taken 3 years of experimentation and hesitation for me to have the courage to present some of my work to him. I suppose you could compare this to preparing a visit to the Delai Lama and your philosophy is still “unconcerned, but thinking about it”. Pending.
When I captured the images of water moving through Lions River in the Natal Midlands I had a sort of funny feeling. Electric, emotional and palpitations over-ridden by my energy to just make more and more images whilst the light was good. When the negatives came from the lab and looked at some of them on the soft-box – the same feelings came back.

But when the final prints ~ 16″x 20″ came out of Dennis’s dark room, I nearly fainted, so strong was the electricity. Hydro-electricity.

Water.

Water movement
Lions River
Lesotho, Photography

Basotho People at Work

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About the Book ~ Basotho People at Work

Basotho People at Work Front Page the book
Basotho People at Work

 

FOR THE best part of a decade, businessman turned photographer René Paul Gosselin has been increasingly drawn to the remote mountain kingdom of Lesotho.

Gradually, he has learnt that, rather than chasing people and scenes, he should ‘wait quietly by the roadside’, and his subjects will eventually arrive by themselves.

This approach has resulted in a stunning set of photographs depicting the lives of a people who, while fundamentally at peace with themselves and their environment, are constantly at work: ploughing, reaping, threshing, winnowing, milling, weaving, and tending their livestock.

They include images of a gathering of hundreds of Basotho horsemen in the remote central highlands, held under the auspices of their paramount chief, to discuss grazing rights and other vital land use issues – the first ever taken of this spectacular annual event.

Lesotho, Photography, Travel

Who is Watching Who

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The first attempt of any enthusiastic observer, writer, photographer or inquisitive tourist at the discovery of Lesotho in the larger sense will inevitably lead to extensive travel. Days are spent rumbling along the gravel roads of the mountains and tearing along the fine tarmac roads of the lowlands looking for the special picture, the Basotho cavalier with Morokotlo hat, and wrapped in his black and yellow Sienna Morena blanket astride a fine bay pony. Or hours of driving the mountain road to see the large numbers of herds and herd boys heading out on their annual transhumance towards the summer grazing valleys in the Central Range.

Eventually the traveller seasons, or like a good wine, aerates once the cork is out and the oxygen brings sense to his thoughts. You learn to slow down and eventually. This is Lesotho, not the city. The events that you are looking for. The pictures you are looking for. But they will come to you if you are patient. Find a spot on the side of a small road and wait there with your coffee and a book and a few rolls of film or a few extra memory chips. The images will walk past!

When foreign visitors came to Thaba Bosiu to seek audience with King Moshoeshoe, they were rightly given a seat and asked to await their moment with the great man. There was certainly no impoliteness on the part of the King in having his visitors wait, for sometimes quite extended periods. He would want to be prepared completely to receive his honoured guest. He would have had the delegate observed, spoken to, and somehow analysed by his trusted advisors or family members. At the he would say “I see you”. Meaning not that he could now accept or receive the person in his presence but that he could them.

As I sit there sipping my coffee and fiddling with my camera, I am ready for the passing event, the special moment or angle of light over a spectacular village or shimmering river. Ever the observer waiting for that ray of sunshine, I constantly calculate the composition of a possible shot, check the essential elements of an image which is still in my head. I notice the herd boys are now more evident than a few moments ago, the youngsters have come out of school and sitting on adjacent knoll looking down at this. Wherever you are there are friendly eyes watching you and I ask; who is observing who? Then I understand that I have been patient and waited for the The Basotho “see me”.