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DERRICK, Tracey
Selected by / Stina Edblom
Date of Birth / 1961
City/Country of Residence / South Africa
Country of Origin / UK
Keyword/ Gender, History, Narration
Artist Statement
I live in South Africa, a country with a particular wealth of cultures. In my work I attempt to show this wealth, to share it, and to demonstrate its value. I never photograph without permission as my work is dependent on creating a relationship with people and their situation. By showing how we differ in our lifestyles, I hope that people will not only come to appreciate their differences, but also recognize how much they have in common.
In my work I document struggles for self-determination, dignity, meaning and power. I photograph ordinary people like refugees, sex workers, street children, displaced Himbas, farm workers and now women in prison. In these portraits of their lives - at work and play - I give them a voice with Eye Inside , focusing my camera on the struggle against the legacy of apartheid, poverty, ignorance and violence. These are not violent images, but a statement confirming the beauty and hope of individuals and their communities.
By the end of the year I needed to give something back. Their daily lives in prison were uneventful, so I taught them some photography – I didn’t really want to end our friendship. The camera group called themselves “Rough Diamonds” and their work is exhibited alongside mine.
I use as little technical support as possible - a manual camera, no flash, and no filters - to capture a raw energy in one to three frames only. When I frame my photographs I never crop, I believe that this destroys something of the truth and immediacy of each moment.
Bio/CV
Tracey Derrick matriculated at Westerford High School, Cape Town in 1979 and graduated from U.C.T. with majors in Psychology and Economics in 1982. During the 1980s Tracey travelled extensively in Europe and North and South America, supporting herself with textile work, media work and teaching. She returned to South Africa and completed her Higher Diploma in Education in 1987. In 1989 she attended the School of Visual Arts in New York and from that time began to practice photography and, as opportunity arose, conduct photography workshops with children and other groups.
She has been working full-time as a photographer since 1992, the time of South Africa’s transition to majority rule. Much of her early work relates in one way or another to the achievement of democracy in Southern Africa, for example her project Side by Side (1994) in which she worked with Primrose Talakumeni and Mavis Mthandeki to document the role of women in the first democratic elections; and Still Moving (1994), in which she recorded the hopes for peace at the time of the elections in Mozambique after many decades of oppression and civil war. The achievement of political freedom in South Africa opened up space for Derrick and other photographers to explore aspects of spiritual life in this country – for example in The Waters of Life (1995) - and to document aspects of experience in the sub-continent that were overlooked during the struggle for freedom. In The Red Ochre People of 1995, Derrick photographed the Himba people in Northern Namibia whose ancient lifestyle is threatened by the construction of dams; in 1997, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees commissioned Hope from Home: Refugees from Africa Living in Cape Town; and also in 1997, she created the essay Basic Necessity: Sex Workers around and about Cape Town. All of these projects took the form of exhibitions and most were published with educational texts to reach school and community groups. While she quickly gained an international reputation with these projects, Tracey continued to hold photographic workshops throughout this period.
Recent projects for which Tracey Derrick has achieved worldwide recognition are Earthworks: The Lives of Farm Labourers in the Swartland and Eye Inside: Women Inmates at the Malmesbury Prison. In these projects Derrick works closely with people in her neighbourhood documenting the experiences of people on the margins of the new dispensation. In the Malmesbury prison project, Derrick returned to her interest in empowering her subjects to take their own photographs and share their stories with the larger society.
By Professor Michael Godby for Kronos publication, September 2007.
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