Her husband's brother Johannes and nephew Derrick in Martjie Marais's kitchen in Gamkaskloof, Cape Province (Western Cape), 1967.
Her husband's brother Johannes and nephew Derrick in Martjie Marais's kitchen in Gamkaskloof, or Die Hel as it came to be known.
The people of this isolated valley in the Swartberg mountains grew fruit and dried it. Before a road was opened in 1962, they would take their produce in a caravan of donkeys over the mountains to Prince Albert or along the Gamka River to Calitzdorp once or twice a year. There they would exchange their produce for the things they needed. With the road came bakkies and radios and detergents and, when they grew older, the youngsters went to the towns and did not come back. In 1967, when this photograph was taken, life in the Kloof still retained much of the quality of isolation of people's lives there over the years. Gradually, however, the farmers left and, by 1992, they had all gone. Their houses became derelict and their orchards and fields overgrown.
Some of the land has subsequently been bought by townspeople and some taken over by the Department of Nature Conservation. Today (2006) Gamkaskloof is part of the Zwartberg Nature Reserve; houses have been prettily, if synthetically, restored and tourists and backpackers are welcomed. The only Kloover still there, Annetjie Mostert-Joubert, a daughter of the Kloof, tries valiantly to impart a sense of the history of the place to its many visitors.
The people of this isolated valley in the Swartberg mountains grew fruit and dried it. Before a road was opened in 1962, they would take their produce in a caravan of donkeys over the mountains to Prince Albert or along the Gamka River to Calitzdorp once or twice a year. There they would exchange their produce for the things they needed. With the road came bakkies and radios and detergents and, when they grew older, the youngsters went to the towns and did not come back. In 1967, when this photograph was taken, life in the Kloof still retained much of the quality of isolation of people's lives there over the years. Gradually, however, the farmers left and, by 1992, they had all gone. Their houses became derelict and their orchards and fields overgrown.
Some of the land has subsequently been bought by townspeople and some taken over by the Department of Nature Conservation. Today (2006) Gamkaskloof is part of the Zwartberg Nature Reserve; houses have been prettily, if synthetically, restored and tourists and backpackers are welcomed. The only Kloover still there, Annetjie Mostert-Joubert, a daughter of the Kloof, tries valiantly to impart a sense of the history of the place to its many visitors.
printed 2006
silver gelatin print on fibre paper
46.5 x 46.5cm
© 2006 Michael Stevenson. All rights reserved.