On an ostrich farm near Oudtshoorn. The man who founded this farm was 94 years old and lay dying in another room. His home had been furnished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the best that ostrich feathers could then buy. Virtually nothing had been changed or added in 45 years. The wife (his second) still used a cool-room for storing the meat she had salted, for she had heard that refrigerators sometimes 'ontplof'. Hester, the widowed daughter by the first marriage was 59 years old. She called her stepmother, aged 49, 'Ma'. While the old man muttered in his dying and the wife tiptoed, Tant Hester, playing richly on the organ, sang psalms flatly in High Dutch.

printed 2006
silver gelatin print on fibre paper
47.5 x 47.5cm

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© 2006 Michael Stevenson. All rights reserved.