The Blikkiesdorp Project is officially titled People in Blikkies: An Insult to South Africa's Young Democracy, and refers to a social documentary effort featuring the Blikkiesdorp community in Delft, Cape Town. The project is in association with Uthango Social Investments and Eclipse PR. The settlement is officially recognized as Symphony Way Temporary Location Area. The project is led by South African photojournalist Lizane Louw, and was active between 2008 and May 2012. The subject of the photographs are the substandard living space and the socioeconomic challenges of the residents. Lizane's goal is to give the people of Blikkies a voice through the use of imagery and media presence attempt to spur change for this ineffective solution to Cape Town's eviction crisis. Since Lizane began her mission to capture the injustices of Blikkies, the settlement has grown almost 15 times larger, inflating from a population of 1600 to a count of 25000 in 2013, and now each structure houses between 5 and 15 people. The photos became the material of her first solo-exhibition which premiered in 2012. The photos are also a precursor to a documentary film that Lizane plans to shoot in 2014.
Project History
The Blikkiesdorp project began when Lizane was covering the settlement for a local newspaper called the Kaap Rapport to report on the unsatisfactory conditions of the community. The article has now turned into the material of a lifelong project. Lizane was inspired to inaugurate her Blikkies effort as an official documentary project when two of the elderly ladies she had been working with died of starvation and tuberculosis due to the circumstances living in the community. She learned over time that despite the government initiation of the project, the issues plaguing the area such as rape, prostitution, and both human and drug trafficking went unnoticed without any NGO or public organization working directly with the community. Rather than photograph these negative stories, she decided to focus on the inspiring and beautiful unsung parts of Blikkiesdorp.
About the photographer
Lizane Louw is a photojournalist, events photographer, and portrait photographer who has been active in the South African media industry since 2007. She served as a contract photojournalist for national publications of Media 24, Rapport, Kaap Rapport and Die Burger until December 2010. She published successfully in Huisgenoot, You, Beeld, The Argus, Cape Times, Mango Magazine, NRC, Nederland's Handelsblad, L'officiel NL, and Africa is a Country and various other local and international publications, print as well as online. As a freelance photojournalist, when in South Africa, she also contributes images to the Gallo Image Library and Africamediaonline. In 2008 she was nominated, with fellow journalist, Colin Hendricks, for Vodacom Journalist of the Year 2008, Category: Hard News, for a feature and investigative story, 'The Suitcase Murder' for Kaap Rapport. In 2011 she was published by the Royal School of Fine Art, Stockholm, Architecture Department and later that same year a selection of photographs from her archive was chosen by Utango, a Non Profit Company, for a WEF (World Economic Forum) event. The photos were used in a presentation to create awareness for Impact Investing in Africa. In September 2011, Louw was an official photographer of Archbishop Desmond Tutu's book launch, Tutu, the Authorized Portrait.