…for a bowl of soup!

The folly of Esau as he sold his birthright for a simple bowl of lentil soup. Most of us look at the story and say “dude, your heritage for a bowl of soup??” You may ask how much lower can a human being stoop? Believe me, we do stoop much lower than this as a people, and our secrets everyone they may spook. There are situations when we pray and ask God to guide us and God being God only guides and points out the way without forcing us into it. After praying for a sign, yet that sign we still ignore and we do what is clearly wrong and this to be wrong we always know. Thereafter comes a life of regrets and “what ifs”. What if I followed the way of the Lord and not followed my base passions? What if I had not sold my inheritance or God-given gift for a bowl of soup?

Submitting to the passions of the mind and body, slowly one moves away from the path set for him. Pulled down by the hunger for sin, the spiritual gift is soon seen as invaluable. Then with giving the hunger more and more attention, the lentil soup soon becomes to the perception something of great importance. Men desert their wives and families, for what seems as a better deal. People leave their duties at church for an illusion of freedom as to have “fun without answering to anyone”. The gift of eternal life is rejected for what is unpure and fleeting. Cheap sex, drunkness, violence and cutthroat competition being some of the bowls we so willingly devour, but how small-minded and lopsided are these pursuits! We all give our lives away for a bowl of lentil soup, at some point or the other, acknowledging it or not, we have sold some or all of our God-given gifts for a bowl of soup…a simple bowl of lentil soup.

I sit here and wish that I had the wisdom in those moments of weakness to not have given in to my hunger, and stood strong as to overcome the urge to accept the bowl of lentil soup for the gifts given to me. The what ifs you unfortunately have to live with each and every single day after you make that decision to take that bowl of soup. Esau was unfortunately not the only one (though he was made a public example) who sold away his gift for a bowl of soup. Me and you my friend are the Esaus of this day, with the exception of being made public examples, we are true carborn copies of the man Esau…We continually trade what is God-given for a simple bowl of lentil soup. O Lord, grant us the strength not to exchange the gifts You have given to us for a bowl of soup…a simple bowl of lentil soup.

Photography and Stereotypes

Photography has in the past and in this day been adapted as a probing tool, it is as a much a 
medium of witnessing as it is an analytical one. In this series of images my concept was to look at 
the stereotypes that ‘we’ have placed on people to an extent that one can see a face and paste 
a personality, an identity just from how we perceive faces. As Alfred Einstein says “We are only 
beginning to learn what to say in a photograph. The world we live in is a succession of fleeting 
moments, anyone of which might say something significant.” 

In this series I photographed a number of people who at first glance I saw and thought I knew the 
kind of people they are only from what I perceived in my mind but only after I talked to them I 
realized they were more than just faces but they had more to offer that what I initially thought. 

The images are two layers of two different people one being the perception I had and the other being the actual identity that they carried. This I found problematic to place stereotypes to faces before getting to know who the actual person is. The darkness in the series is the aura that I feel stereotypes place on our identity as a people of Zimbabwe. The spot light is to emphasize the weight that we have placed on faces to determine who a person is. I found this would explain possibilities in the sense that in epimistic possibilities (possibilities that come through knowledge e.g. tomorrow is Friday the possibility that tomorrow is Friday factual). What is the possibility that we have created an identity of how we perceive people from the stereotypes and ideologies we have over and over placed on people’s faces? I find it highly problematic though it is still within our power to recreate a new perception and the possibilities are infinite.

About the Author/Photographer

Nyaradzo “Nyary” Dhliwayo was born in Marondera, Zimbabwe on the 24th of October 1991. Her name Nyaradzo is a Shona name that means comfort. She tries  to portray the meaning of her name in her work and have her name as her identity as it carries a meaning that she feels obliges her to be the voice of her society and become a comforter through the emotion and imagery of her work. Nyary has had art, especially photography, as her release point as long as she can remember. It has given her a chance to escape into worlds she created for herself; with the subjects becaming her confidants, the compositions of her music. Her main interests lie in the themes of identity and representation of the body especially the female body and the stereotypes that come along.

Gwanza Month of Photography

Gwanza Photography… an exhibition founded and organised by Mr Calvin Dondo is an annual photography exhibition held in Zimbabwe. Dondo was reported by the Zimbabwean Daily News newspapers as saying “Gwanza means a frame and in the context of the exhibition, it reflects a timeframe of certain events as depicted in the photographs. We came up with the name after searching for a Shona word that could describe photography and identify ourselves as Zimbabweans”

I have also been told that the word Gwanza, means “gap” and from my thinking, I would say the name was given to this yearly exhibition, maybe unintentionally, to say that the exhibition would seek to fill the “gap” in society and educate through photography. Nonetheless, the work done is quite remarkable.

What follows below is a is a piece written by a dear friend of mine, Nyaradzo “Nyary” Dhliwayo about the Gwanza photography festival. I will write a piece of my own about Nyary as a great photographer who is full of great promise and promises to change the world of photography and art through her work. I hope you enjoy the read and you will be looking forward to the next month of Gwanza photography with myself. Enjoy!!!

(…and oh, please do pardon the quality of some of the pictures. I took the pictures using my phone…just to give you a glimpse of what was being displayed.)

Gwanza Month of Photography 2013:

In its 10th year of photo festivals, Gwanza Photography has over the years been a platform for Zimbabwean photography to take its baby steps to a wider and broader sphere. This year’s theme 4+20Possibilities explores the idea of infinite possibilities given our definition of possibility being unspecified qualities of a promising nature or potential.

Since its inception photography’s aim has been to be represent reality, retell and freeze the moments that pass us by for later purposes, the bodies of work submitted this year according to the theme serve to be objective representations of the million possibilities that surround us in the world we live in, positive or negative possibilities Allan Sekula, a photographer and visual culture theorist, poignantly contends that while pictures are not objective representations of the lived world, the cultural belief in the truth value of photography leads most people to consider photographs “congruent with knowledge in general.” For my purposes it is not so important to determine to what degree photographs are objective records, but rather to explore how this assumption can be used to critique the authority we invest in looking. The issue at stake is how the images that are showing in this year’s Gwanza act as mirrors of the infinite possibilities that surround us. From fine art conceptual portrait photographs that I submitted (Nyary Dhliwayo), to photo-journalistic imagery that a bunch of the local journo’s submitted which includes the likes of Annie Mpalume, Believe Nyakudyara , Watson Umfeli to documentary photography from Nancy Mteki, Davina Jogi George Sena from Congo, Thomas Tsama from Zambia  to commercial imagery from Thabani all these images  are mirrors of possibilities that after the show we would have experienced a whole new world, new ways of looking and a better understanding of photography.

Our aim as Gwanza is to shift the perspective of the Zimbabwean communities that photography is more than the shutter going but a probing tool that over the years has changed societies like the famous Hector Peterson image. We want our viewers to learn that photography is an experience that the maker of the image and the viewer interact in like the famous self-portraits by Samuel Fosso, and surely progress is undeniably present given the amount of people who have submitted this year. We hope to see the work getting better through the Master Classes that we hold to help upcoming photographers to enhance their technical, theory and editing skills.  4+20Possibilities look around you will see the world is pregnant with potential!!