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nelson mandela bay's family lifestyle
author:
theunis pienaar
captured stories
photography:
leon harmse
issue:
8, summer 2008
Pine Pienaar is a legend, not only as photographer, but also as teacher and mentor to many of our countries most talented artists. He taught for many years, first at the PE College and later at the PE Technikon. Lately you'll often find him, just outside Steytlerville, still teaching. Perhaps there is no distinct time when his teaching started – always being surrounded by people who are hungry for his stories and wisdom and guidance. “Everyone has a story. Journalists love telling the stories of famous or great people, but everywhere you'll find ordinary people with stories more marvelous than you can imagine.” Pine's own story came to life in Potchefstroom. “My father was a newspaper man, my mother a mother. We had a large family and wonderful days catching crab in the river, gazing at clouds and losing ourselves in small town dreams.” How long ago this was, only Therina, his wife & inspiration, will be able to divulge, as is appropriate for an icon such as him. Pine is slow to talk about himself. His photographs, appear easily – and stories; many stories. A trip to Spain. A friendship made. A gold nugget of wisdom, dropped amongst ordinary words. “I am working on a Coffee Table book of people in the Karroo; ordinary people, with extraordinary stories. I want to call it 'small history'. I want to tell the stories of so many 'nobodies' who lived and struggled and overcame. We need other people's stories. They set us free from ourselves.” Pine did not start out with the dream of becoming photographer, mentor & teacher. “After school I went off to varsity, trying my hand at languages & psychology. The psychology was clinical & it frustrated me, always trying to categorize & diagnose illnesses. It didn't sit well with my approach to life. I traded the varsity for three years in Mozambique. This was fantastic. It was like being in a small part of Europe, just across the border from South Africa. The Portuguese food & culture and way of life were intoxicating. I made Villa Louisa, north of Lorenzo Marques, my base and from there traveled into Africa, visiting the lakes of Kenya and Rhodesia, as well. I had to document my experiences & words were inadequate, so I started taking pictures. A photograph can capture so much more than a million words.” After three years Pine returned to South Africa, still hungry for more experiences of the different world that made such an impression on him. “My savings had run out, so I started a tour company, taking young people to Mozambique and Swaziland. It was more of an adventure than a business. It was a way of doing what I enjoyed & sharing it with people of whom I could not get enough. We roughed it all the way, camping and visiting remote locations. Then the Frelimo take-over happened – perhaps if circumstances were unchanged, I would still be stuck on that experience, but rivers run dry and we move on, that is the nature of being.” It was in the middle seventies, when Pine started working in photography. “I started as photographer's assistant at Boyd Edwards Photography. I didn't do much photography, though – it was carrying lights & setting up shoots, but at least it was a good way of getting involved in the industry. We enjoyed the hay-days of life in Hillbrow. That was a time very different from the experiences that preceded it, but similar in the sense that it also contained experiences, more learning and growth.” “When our son was born we moved down to Port Elizabeth. Hillbrow had lost much of its glamour and I started teaching in this wonderful city to fabulous young people. I've always had an academic approach, needing to analyze and understand whatever I do, so teaching came easily to me – actually to us. Therina is still teaching at the PE College. She originally taught interior decorating, but has since moved on to become the arts & crafts coordinator at the College's learnership program.” Pine is slightly elusive about how he met his Therina. “Some things must remain untouched,” he explains. “In that way I am a bit of an incurable romantic. When living in Pretoria we had many friends who danced for the TRUK Ballet Company. Wonderful ladies, but I chose to keep my distance. If you get to close to a beautiful and poetic something, you run the risk of allowing its magic to fade. History shows that Picasso wasn't a very nice person, but his paintings are magnificent. It would have spoilt his art, if you knew the man.” We move the conversation to photography. “It is very possible to make a successful living out of photography without being a very good photographer. You need to have the ability to 'see', if you want to capture exceptional moments. Photography is a language. It is representational. What you capture and what is communicated in your photograph could be very different. As westerners we have a dualistic way of thinking. We work in contrasts of pretty and ugly or beautiful and not beautiful. This cannot be true of photographic fine art. Easterners think in terms of 'oneness' and see individual experiences. When capturing something, you have to be able to discern effectively what part of the whole is more real than any other. Photography cannot be a career, it must be a passion. You must be hungry for it with an insatiable hunger and be willing to sacrifice yourself completely to it.” Pine's passion and his own immersion into photography, is very evident. “A camera or expensive equipment does not make a photographer. You must have an eye that can search for light and shade - an eye that can see form where there is no form for anyone else to touch. You must be able to read stories in shapes that apparently have no stories to tell. On my trip to Spain I experienced and saw Hemingway's Spain, although that Spain has been long forgotten. You must have an ear, a visual literacy, with which to hear the voices of hidden symbols.” Even though I am more a man of words, perhaps because of it, I am pacified into silence for an eternity, by the intensity oozing in the moment created by Pine's words, then brought back to this reality as he continues to expose a world of which he is an honored citizen. “My favorite camera was a Hasselbad. Now I use both the Nikon and the Canon Digital Cameras - I really have no preference, the vision is more important than the equipment. The digital era has certainly changed photography. You must be careful to loose your patience, when you work in digital format. Photography is not a matter of chance. You cannot shoot 500 pictures and hope that one will be it. You must wait for the perfect moment to appear. You must coax it into reality and if you want your photography to be timeless art, I still believe it must be in selenium tones. I told you I am an incurable romantic. There is mysticism to the chemicals and flasks and process of bringing a captured moment to life, from film, when you develop a black and white picture by hand.” While carrying his lectureship in photography at the School of Art and Design at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Pine specialized in astronomical photography, before retiring in 2007. He was closely associated with the public outreach program of the Boyden Observatory, one of South Africa's major observatories and also initiated a school awareness program to promote astronomy and other natural sciences. Anyone who enjoys photography may join him in the Karoo and be mesmerized as he teaches the basics of photography while telling stories from Babylonian and Greek Mythology. Perhaps this legend of a different world, never moved from one place to the next, but continued doing what he has always done, appearing in different configurations, to touch people and places who needed enrichment and connection to a romantic reality that cannot be contained in this world.
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