DNA MAN
The great biotechnologist Craig Venter died yesterday.
In 1990, he revolutionised biological science by independently mapping out and sequencing human DNA, known as The Human Genome Project — a landmark step toward uncovering the genetic basis of human disease and origins.
While serving in Vietnam, Venter tried to commit suicide by swimming out to sea, but changed his mind along the way. After witnessing death and injury among comrades, he decided to study medicine, and later turned to biomedical research.
When I photographed him in 2004, he told our team: “The complexity of life in our society has a chance at being helped by modern science. It gives us a chance just to understand where we fit into the continuum of life. We found that the variance in genetic code between any two humans is extremely small. This concept of race is clearly a social construct. There is no scientific definition of race. It’s a social definition. There’s only one race, and it’s the human race.”
#craigventer
PORTRAYALS 1976-2024
My partner Tasha Tyler – 2007
TASHA@50 My speech at my partner Tasha’s 50th birthday party on 4 February 2024:
“Yesterday I asked the AI app ChatGPT to write a speech for my girlfriend upon her 50th birthday, adding that she was vivacious, clever, funny, stylish, generous and joyful. In a flash, the app wrote back: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed guests, It is an honour … ‘ It went on and on in this formal language, one cliché after the other, so I decided to skip ChatGPT, because all I really wanted to say is: Tasha brings a unique energy that feels like someone has just turned up the music. She sparks joy ...
She teaches me the difference between touching and feeling, between hearing and listening, between looking and seeing ... “For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as also I am known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)
Let’s drink to her health!”
This is the last portrait in my book “PORTRAYALS”. It’s a portfolio of 113 prints, printed on photographic paper and supported by my writing, bound in a book. This is the finest photographic book printing I could find, but it’s also the most expensive. With the idea of making it a collector’s item, I’ve printed only 30 copies. The book sells for R7 500.00 including VAT. My email address is: [email protected].
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PORTRAYALS 1976-2024
Phillicus Olivier, friend – 2022
IN MEMORY OF A CLOSE FRIEND
I used my iPhone to photograph my dear friend Phillicus Olivier in Churchhaven in 2022. I had first met him in 1958 in standard 4 in primary school. He was my friend for life, so to speak – loyal, caring and loving.
A couple of days before his death in 2023, in our final conversation, this kind and gentle man mentioned to my partner Tasha and me that the only life worth living was one of creative endeavour. Whether playing jazz on his violin or cooking a four-course meal, he lived by his credo - his was a life of spirituality peppered with sustained hedonism. A life worth living.
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PORTRAYALS 1976-2024
Aida Uys, friend – 2010
IN MEMORY OF AIDA
The suburb of Rugby, located between the N1 and the notorious Koeberg Road, is trendy Cape Town’s bleaker terrain – its zef side, as the rapper Jack Parow would say – the unfashionable area that’s not earmarked for gentrification. Thank God!
After living in an old Railways cottage near the Cape Town harbour for a number of years, it makes sense that the late Aida Uys and her partner Braam Theron chose Rugby to make their next home, for they never followed trends. They set them. To me, they were the most stylish couple the Cape has ever seen. Period. Style is really undefinable and yet tangible, for it touches your senses.
I met Aida during the 1980s as she got off her black Triumph motorbike. She was wearing an embroidered silk blouse under an old leather jacket, a man’s khaki trousers with turnups, Wupperthal boots, delicate gold jewellery and vintage leather gloves, and her hair was in a bun. On the back of the bike was a basket that Braam had made for her to carry Ysbeer, their cross wire-haired terrier, her travel companion wherever she rode.
Braam and Aida collected stuff, lots of it, tons of it. Their house was filled with objects, some chosen for their usefulness, some for fun and some for sheer folly. There were anglepoise lamps, model planes, coins, compasses, masks, telescopes, bangles, tools, ropes, helmets, and many, many leather suitcases. And there were gems like a glove finger stretcher (honestly), a peach peeler, a boot button hook ...
Braam was really Aida’s romantic handyman. Because Aida took tea brewed from a pot (tea bags were strictly non-U), tradition dictated that Braam would make her a tea strainer for every birthday. This tender detail is what made their liaison so special, so complementary.
Aida was once asked what her ideal living situation would be. Her answer was simple: “I want Braam to build me a room on top of the garage, furnished only with my piano, and a window with a view of the sea.”
Why do we live where we do?
Because we do not seek safe havens
And because of friends
Braam and Aida.
Aida died in 2012.
PORTRAYALS 1976-2024
Marsi van de Heuvel, artist – 2019
FINE LINER
In 2019, I photographed Marsi van de Heuvel in the vaults of the Zeitz Museum in Cape Town for Wallpaper* City Guide Cape Town. She uses a fineliner to make marks on paper. She explains: “One stroke holds a brief moment of energy and intention.” The use of this meticulous technique gives her portraits, landscapes and abstract fields a depth and radiance which encapsulates the meditation and obsessive effort that went into creating them. In the presence of her work, I felt a similar sensory experience I had in the Rothko room of the Tate Gallery in London, a sense of connection to something bigger than myself.
@marsivandeheuvel
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PORTRAYALS 1976-2024
Lukhanyo Mdingi, fashion designer – 2017
FASHIONISTA
I photographed the fashion designer Lukhanyo Mdingi in 2016 for Wallpaper. City Guide Cape Town. He is inspired by the vibrance and aesthetics of small South African towns, which has led him to source traditional fabrics and apply them in a modern manner. In 2019, Mdingi became an international player when he presented his first collection to an international audience at Men’s Fashion Week in New York.
@ lukhanyomdingi
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PORTRAYALS 1976-2024
Terry Norton, actress – 1985
VULA
In the mid-1980s, Vula magazine had a shoestring budget, but it was fun to work for them, as one had complete creative freedom. I photographed the young, bright and gracious actress Terry Norton at the old power station in downtown Cape Town, lit with a single electric bulb. I recently colourised the photograph in Photoshop. Terry went on to a great acting career on stage and in film, working with the late Irish novelist and playwright Edna O’Brien and actors like Michael Caine, Juliette Binoche and Forest Whitaker.
@terrynorton
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PORTRAYALS 1976-2024
Pieter–Dirk Uys in his role as Tannie Evita Bezuidenhout – 2000
THE MOST FAMOUS WHITE WOMAN IN SOUTH AFRICA
The author, satirist and social activist Pieter-Dirk Uys has helped South Africans to survive and change by exposing them to the ridiculous side of Apartheid. He has been called The Most Famous White Woman in South Africa. He is kind, friendly, and massively energetic. At 80, he is still dreaming up new ideas, and his alter ego, Tannie Evita Bezuidenhout, is still up and about like any Pretoria housewife, obsessively house-proud, plastered with makeup, and entirely reliant on a fleet of maids.
@pieterdirkuys
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PORTRAYALS 1976-2024
Manila von Teez outside her house in Goodwood, Cape Town – 2021
Ina Propriette on the street where she lives in Rondebosch, Cape Town – 2021
THE KEWPIE PROJECT
Today, drag queens are freer to live out their fantasies than in the 1970s when, for example, Sandra Dee was arrested and imprisoned for ‘dressing up as a woman’. They’ve become more mainstream, but also less risqué.
I worked with the artist Nina Milner who recently launched and curated the Kewpie Legacy Project, a vehicle for selling merchandise and portrait prints of drag queens, to benefit the District Six Museum.
@districtsixmuseum@manilavonteez@ina_propriette . /jacdevilliers/docs/portrayals_square?fr=xKAE9_zMzM
PORTRAYALS 1976-2024
Miranda Trefoil, Sandy Lentoor (a.k.a. Sandra Dee), Tamara Dobson and Olivia de Havilland (a.k.a. Madame Two Swords) – 1978
WELCOME TO MADAME TWO SWORDS AND THE GIRLS
By the summer of 1978, most of Cape Town’s District Six had been bulldozed, in the name of the racial ideology of Apartheid. A community had been destroyed and a wasteland created that still serves as a stark reminder of the injustices of the past. They’d ripped out the heart, but somehow the spirit of the place remained – manifesting itself in the theatrics and defiance of a spontaneous drag queen show I was fortunate to witness.
In the harsh summer light, with the pavement their catwalk, “Madame Two Swords and the Girls” strutted their stuff in front of a crowd of cheering kids. Street theatre at its very best.
@districtsixmuseum
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PORTRAYALS 1976-2024
Johaar Mosaval, ballet dancer, photographed among the ruins of District Six – 2021
THE DANCER FROM DISTRICT SIX
In 1950, before leaving for London to join the Sadler’s Wells School of Ballet, Johaar Mosaval had to perform a dance routine for two Imams to decide if ballet was compatible with Islam. They were blown away by his flair, and gave him their blessings. Mosaval had been studying with Dulcie Howes at the UCT Ballet School where he had to stand at the back of the class, separated from his fellow students because of Apartheid.
He went on to join the Royal Ballet Company, and in 1953 he danced a solo in Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. He describes the experience as the highlight of his life: “That night, the whole opera house consisted of every king and queen in the world. It was the most magnificent, spectacular audience ever, and dancing on stage you could see the flickering of the tiaras and the diamonds that were worn that night. I was floating on Cloud Nine.”
The words “You’re too tiny to succeed as a ballet dancer” were among the many challenges Johaar had to endure and surmount. Among with childhood poverty, racial discrimination and parental disapproval, this gave him the iron will he needed to succeed.
And his success was phenomenal, for by the mid-1960s he had moved up the ranks to senior principal dancer, partnering such famous ballerinas as Margot Fonteyn and Svetlana Beriosova. He danced with Rudolf Nureyev, and worked with famous choreographers like Kenneth MacMillan and John Cranko. Due to touring with the company, he gained international recognition as a brilliant character dancer with impeccable technique. Among others, he danced famously as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Jasper in Pineapple Poll and the Bluebird in The Sleeping Beauty.
I photographed Johaar in District Six, not far from where he grew up in a thriving community, long before the place was demolished into a wasteland of sorrow. However, at the age of 93, this sharp and beautiful man shows only contentment as he recounts stories from his past, filled with miracle and wonder.
@districtsixmuseum
