Photography lends itself to the practice of distilling moments in time; it is a medium we have employed to perceive and portray aspects of this vast world. Filled with a rich cultural array of beings, capturing the essence of South Africa is perhaps one of the most important contributions that can be made to understanding the intimate nuances of its people, particularly in a country so ravaged by class and racial divisions.
Alessandro Iovino is Italian, yet has shot some of the most beautifully saturated images of aspects of South African culture; underpinned with respect, consent and as far from a voyeuristic angle as possible. As the line is razor thin between such endeavours to explore outside of one’s own cultural context, particularly as Alessandro is European, the images from the series Albow Gardens and Chrysalis Academy display no agenda; these are moments in time that show behaviours, emotions, structures and disciplines embedded within the South African consciousness. The images show the pursuit of people who are real; this is not editorial nor fashioned for marketability; this is Alessandro’s genuine pursuit to understand the human experience.
“What grabs my attention is the youth. I’m focusing on kids and on their dreams, their hopes, and in certain situations their stolen futures. I’m focusing on kids and their growth because mine as well as theirs have been problematic and somehow stolen. I feel that kids and youth from SA have this responsibility to change the country, even if it is not their destructive doing in the first place.”
Alessandro muses, “I met Albow gardens by chance, I was walking, searching for something, and I was coming from a period where I wasn’t sure anymore if I wanted to do photojournalism. I was looking for something that could last and knew that I needed to find my story, a story that could really make me forget that I was there to photograph, but rather letting the story be my obsession, mixing with it, living with it, photographing just because it was my story and not something I needed to sell to a magazine. I spent 3 years of my time in Albow Gardens. It changed my life.”
Having worked for major campaigns, and being featured in i-D, Alessandro communicates an exceptional range in his ability to view his craft as a means to converge worlds; and in the context of these bodies of work, there is a palpable depth to the images.
Finally, Alessandro states – “What grabs my attention is the youth. I’m focusing on kids and on their dreams, their hopes, and in certain situations their stolen futures. I’m focusing on kids and their growth because mine as well as theirs have been problematic and somehow stolen. I feel that kids and youth from SA have this responsibility to change the country, even if it is not their destructive doing in the first place.”
