It’s the look of sheer indifference that draws Jo Ractliffe back to this portrait, which she took in South Africa’s Northern Cape in 2013. Ractliffe, who is known for her landscape photography exploring legacies of colonialism and apartheid, tends to avoid taking pictures of people – the power dynamics between photographer and subject in her home country are especially complex. But she made an exception for Johanna Taukuheke. Ractliffe met Taukuheke during a visit to Riemvasmaak, a remote settlement near the border with Namibia. “I spent a morning talking to her, and then I asked if I could come back the next day to photograph her.”
Taukuheke, in her seventies at the time, was living alone in a two-room house filled with Catholic iconography. She had grown up in Riemvasmaak, but in 1974 had been evicted by the apartheid government and sent into exile. She was one of 3.5 million black South Africans forced out of their homes between 1960 and 1983 as a result of segregation policies, many of them sent to “tribal homelands” known as bantustans. Taukuheke and her brother were sent to live in northern Namibia, where they had no family connections.
It wasn’t until 1995, after the end of apartheid, that she was able to return home. Reintegration wasn’t easy. Few returnees had documentation to back up their claims of house or land ownership. Taukuheke ended up living in a meagre dwelling, her community riven by conflict and deprived of many basic services. “She was very angry about the restitution process,” Ractliffe says. “She was angry at the lack of acknowledgement. I remember her saying that this was not a respectful process.”
Her feelings seem clear enough in this photograph, which is included in an exhibition of Ractliffe’s work opening in Paris later this month. “Mostly people don’t inhabit their anger: they tell you the most horrific stories politely. Johanna was different. She did not disguise it.”
While taking her portrait, Ractliffe felt that Taukuheke was “completely indifferent” to her: she didn’t compose herself like many sitters do. “I love this portrait for that reason,” she says.
Jo Ractliffe: Out of Place is at Jeu de Paume, Paris, from 30 January until 24 May
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