ABSTRACT
I have an archive of 19,000 black and white negatives of photographs I took in Southern Africa between 1979 and 1999, when I was working with the anti-racist literary magazine Staffrider. The question of what to preserve and what to display, particularly now, decades on from the formal end of apartheid, is fraught with issues, fears … and ghosts. Verne Harris’ 2015 article, ‘Hauntology, archivy and banditry’, and in particular his discussion of the Derridean notion of hauntology, have led me to examine the ghosts raised by some of my images. Harris says that hauntology is about ‘discovering that most disturbing of all ghosts - the stranger deep inside oneself’. Self-reflection on the part of the photographer is inescapable, but it is not enough. Derrida’s notion of hauntology rises, Harris says, from a belief in justice and produces ‘a something-to-be-done’. To be able to name some of the hauntings in my images, I knew I needed help. So I have begun to locate viewers who are connected with the subjects in some way, inviting them to meet me and recording our conversations. This co-production of knowledge, which often surprises and illuminates me and my co-workers, may indeed be the ‘something-to-be-done’ around my work. This chapter describes the process of one such collaboration.
