\u201cThere is a beauty in decay,\u201d she says. Perhaps it has something to do with the way one sees but I am not so sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy attraction is two- fold,\u201d she tells me. \u201cI am drawn by the beauty but I am also interested in the aspect of mourning what used to be,\u201d she adds. Now she has me interested. She pauses and doesn\u2019t seem to want to go into details. But soon she lets out the secret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWell, I am actually working on a series on urban decay, the decay of the industrial sites.\u201d Ah. I get it. Well, sort of. Alice is not afraid of tackling difficult subjects. I remember this from the first time I encountered her work about ten years ago. At the time she was participating in an exhibition about street children called \u201cThe Streets where I live,\u201d about ten years ago. The exhibition included paintings and photographs by street children as well as established artists about life on the streets. That\u2019s not the only exhibition Alice has been involved in. She has taken part in various others in Zimbabwe and her work has travelled to Australia, the United States, England, Cuba, Botswana, Malawi, South Afrika, France, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia and other places she has forgotten about, she tells me. Impressive, I think. I am interested to know how all this began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWell, I am fortunate to have received a lot of nurturing. I was born in Ashira, in Tanzania, to Zimbabwean parents,\u201d she says. \u201cI began my early life right on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. I can still remember it to this day, even though we only lived there until I was five. The mountain disappeared every day at four o\u2019clock in the afternoon,\u201d she says laughing. \u201cI imagined it went to its mother and came back the next day.\u201d We both laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the age of two, Alice\u2019s father bought her a set of non-toxic water colours. \u201cI knew from that age what I was going to become,\u201d she says. Her father went on to introduce her to the wonders of photography when she was six.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI still remember him lying on the ground playing with our adopted stray cat, Susan, by the rockery. I still have the photo \u2013 blurry as anything,\u201d The camera she used to take that picture was a Pentax, a manual one. \u201cMy father said to me, \u2018just point and shoot\u2019. I did. From then on I fell in love with the camera.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She rediscovered the camera when she was 17 years old. By then Alice\u2019s family had moved to Zimbabwe, where she did her schooling up to O level before moving once again. This time, it was to Australia.
\u201cI went to St Clare\u2019s College in ACT, Canberra, and I picked up a camera during a photography lesson.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A photography lesson at school? Alice nods. \u201cThat\u2019s right. You could pick any combination of lessons you wanted to take as long as you had the compulsory ones covered. As part of my combination I chose photography,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen I was at school in Harare I hated it. But when I got to Australia, school just changed for me. The teachers at my school had a lot of passion for the pupils. They cared and that made the world of difference,\u201d Alice says. After high school, she did a BA in Fine Art before going on to obtain her Masters at the Australian National University, Institute of the Arts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI majored in photography and animation,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I was doing my first degree that\u2019s when Photoshop came out. They introduced it at my university and since then I\u2019ve been hooked.\u201d It was during that time that she also developed a love for the dark room. \u201cThe quietness in the environment and the quiet I experience within myself is what I love. Creativity just germinates in different ways. You are part artist, part scientist. It\u2019s just a beautiful combination.\u201d Unfortunately, Alice doesn\u2019t have a dark room of her own. \u201cPerhaps one day,\u201d she says. That doesn\u2019t stop her from pursuing her love of photography though. She can cover a wide scope in terms of subject matter but tends to enjoy portraits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI am a portrait photographer with a touch of surrealism in my work. I love to do portraits of Afrikan women. I work a lot with fabric and skin tone, skin texture. I find those so dramatic,\u201d she says. These days, she uses a Canon EOS 10D digital. \u201cIt\u2019s light, portable and it has become an extension of my hand. I am often with it,\u201d she adds. She has come a long way from that girl with a Pentax manual. I\u2019m guessing a Pentax manual wouldn\u2019t be ideal for pursuing the artistic side of photography, which Alice does.
What keeps her going, I ask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI believe that all creativity is spiritual,\u201d she answers. \u201cI have a Nigerian acquaintance, a fellow artist, who used to say that when you pursue your art, you are imitating the creator. I find that I need to tap into the spiritual side of things in order to produce good work. We are spiritual beings. God is spirit. He is creative,\u201d she goes on. So, does that mean she never suffers from artist\u2019s block?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She shakes her head. \u201cI have had artist block, like many artists. Often blocks come when I am not in the right place with God. The moment I get that sorted out, my work just flows.
Speaking of work flow, we talk about her most recent work. \u201cMy last exhibition was at MAD (Multifaceted Arts Domain) earlier this year. I did portraits of Afrikan women with fabric. I focused on the richness of the fabric texture and sensuality of the skin, playing with the drama on each, but juxtaposing this with a calm background,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I ask her which artists inspire her. She spouts off names. Michael Parkes, a lithographer and sculptor. \u201cI love his work for its colour, its themes. He deals a lot with the female body. I find the way he does this beautiful,\u201d she says throwing in other names like Cindy Sherman, Tonely Ngwenya, Cosmos Shiridzinomwa and Annie Leibovitz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We talk about where she sees herself in the future. \u201cI would love to have the passion for my craft, to still be adventurous and experiment with it. And most of all to still be in love with it,\u201d she says. It turns out that she\u2019s worked as a lecturer somewhere along the path to where she is today. \u201cWhen I lectured at the local poly, I was so stimulated by the people I taught. I would love to go back to lecturing, but only when I\u2019ve finished my adventures. I don\u2019t believe in retirement so that\u2019s what I would do after all my adventures.\u201d
Here\u2019s to many more adventures in the Wonderland of photography, Alice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThere is a beauty in decay,\u201d she says. Perhaps it has something to do with the way one sees but I am not so sure. \u201cMy attraction is two- fold,\u201d she tells me. \u201cI am drawn by the beauty but I am also interested in the aspect of mourning what used to be,\u201d she adds. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":219,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-povokonvo"},"yoast_head":"\n